


Tumbledowne

by misslonelyhearts



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi, Short, Smut, Smutlet, Tumblr, prompts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-04-24
Updated: 2013-09-06
Packaged: 2017-11-04 06:50:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 63
Words: 19,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/390971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misslonelyhearts/pseuds/misslonelyhearts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because I've built up a collection of these micro-fics, three-sentence stories, smutlets and flufflets from the prompts I received on Tumblr over the last six months. . .I decided to stick them all in once place.  They aren't ALL nsfw, but most of them are.  The pairing is listed as the Chapter Title, and other than that there's no real organization.  Just reference the Chapter Index if you're looking for something specific and don't want to troll the whole collection. </p>
<p>(While I do have a blast every time I write these little fills, I am usually half in the bag when I do them so they are imperfect and probably rife with errors.  Apologies!)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Varric and Cassandra - for iheartapostates

(this is a truly sublime work of art, done by [iheartapostates](http://iheartapostates.tumblr.com/tagged/napkin%20drawing). . .on a NAPKIN)

“She defeated the Arishok in single combat?”  The Seeker throws her arms wide, prowling just inside the fall of light that holds them both.  He’s told this so often, words drizzling over too many gaping faces, not to notice the way her steps slow and her mouth broadens, even half-cast in shadow. They can’t help it; everyone smiles at this part.  Cassandra waves a hand in front of him. “It all sounds so romantic.”

Varric looks down at the open page, steepled fingers resting against his forehead. There, the champion’s illustration beams back at him; softness emboldened by starkness and black lines, weight in the eyes and in the Qunari sword, too many sigils cracked and bleeding their purpose into the woman’s very body.  This drawing differs from all the others in the tale.  Many ask . . .and Varric always replies that it _is_ in fact his own work.  Which had been the Rivaini’s sole stipulation upon offering it.

Because the Seeker is more right than she knows.  Varric’s thumb works a soft circle over Hawke’s face, and down the jagged line of her armor.  Romantic?  Perhaps.  You just can’t have a good story, a bestseller, unless your pain shows.  Just enough to lend a measure of credibility and . . .romance.  Since telling this one, Varric has learned that the best stories can also be _illustrated_ by the same sort of folk.  By those for whom the price of love is paid, despite its promise of agony, without hesitation.


	2. Varric tells Merrill what he sees in the Champion of Kirkwall. Isabela helps.

“What do you see in Hawke?”  Merrill coos a little over the foamy residue of her beer when she catches Varric’s eyes on Marian.  “I mean, I know what she looks like . . . but what do _you_ see?”

Across from the elf, Isabela palms a card, unnoticed by everyone but Varric.  The Rivaini doesn’t even lift an eyebrow at Merrill’s question. . .but she _does_ cast an unguarded glance at the champion’s rear end.

Varric swipes the split tip of his quill against the blotter and lays it aside. 

“Well, Daisy, I guess what I see in Hawke is a lot of what I see in all of you.”  He begins, leaning back to fold thick fingers over his chest.  When he takes a breath, smirking at his own unspoken wit, Isabela steals his moment.

“Nose hair.” Says the pirate, evenly.


	3. Bann Teagan

Teagan takes a moment of each day, for the last two weeks or so, to stop in the stairwell of the East tower.  Through the single heavy window he has watched the small, careful lives of a pair of robins as they build twig upon twig, tightly swirling their nest in the upper reaches of the tremendous oak in the castle yard.

If not for Valena he wouldn’t have noticed them at all.

“My lord, look!”  She had breathed against the leaded panes.  They watched for a handful of moments.  Perhaps an hour passed, side by side, as the birds tucked and plucked at their prodigious cluster of building materials.

“Before you know it we’ll hear the endless chirp of hungry mouths.”  He had mused, and looked down into the girl’s wide eyes.  Valena smiled, still watching the robins.

Now, though, there are eggs.  Four perfect, blue shells wink at him through the narrow window as he descends.  And Teagan can no more pass by without staring than he can ignore the crisp snap of Redcliffe’s banners in the morning wind.  Both little red-breasts push tightly together this chilly afternoon, protecting their treasure with every warm offering they can give in feather and bone.


	4. Athenril/Bethany - Lyrium kisses

The grasp of it on her tongue is worse than thorns, and better than sugar.  Athenril wrenches her lips from Bethany’s, breath stuttering. As she kisses the length of the mage’s body, keeping some reserve of the lyrium from chasing fully down her throat, the poetry of smuggling this substance is not lost on her.  Though, she’d never call it poetry.  Even Bethany doesn’t have a word, or the whisper of a spell, for how the remaining lyrium feels when Athenril parts her.  And presses it like cold lightning, tongue to flesh, between her thighs.


	5. Varric/Marian - Isabela takes advantage of an open door

“Door.” Varric manages to slide vowels and consonants beside his tongue where it catches Marian’s throat.  She nods.  But the ascent is more for the fingers inside her, and the needy voice that’s lost its authoritative edge at her ear.  And the door goes largely unnoticed.

Except for Isabela.  Who needs neither reason nor invitation to observe.

It’s nothing she hasn’t seen before.  As she cocks her head to follow them down to the floor, Marian crawling to seat the dwarf where his beard doesn’t grow, Isabela _does_ wish she’d thought to bring a drink.


	6. Bethany/Merrill - Blood in the Deep Roads

“It’ll never come out.”  Bethany scowls down the tunnel, darkspawn bodies strewn like overindulged party guests in the corridor.  Her tunic is soaked.  How can blood look so black on blue?

Firm, petite hands trace one exposed wrist, calling Bethany back to the elf kneeling beside her, and Merrill doesn’t look up at her when she murmurs, “I’ve been getting blood off things for years.  There’s a trick.  I can show you.”

Bethany turns over the hands on skin.  Green eyes envelope her, replacing the cooled blood with a familiar, whipping heat.  “I’d. . .appreciate that.”

Their lips are evenly matched.  Tongues, too.  Merrill’s fingernails raise crescent welts. As Bethany slips a palm over the mage’s racing heart, reaching for a breast, trailing to trace the slim waist, she wonders if her brother’s hands have traveled this far.


	7. Isabela/Aveline - The Coast

Toes are marvelous devices.  Isabela can pick up nearly anything with hers.  When her boots are off.  Which they are.  Discarded on the rocky coast beside studded leather, and the mirrored shine of three blades.

“Don’t.” Aveline doesn’t open her eyes, freckled cheeks turning red.  “Don’t even think about it.”

Isabela pauses, sea water poised around her flick-ready toes.  What would be worth seeing the Captain chase her, naked and flaming across the shore?  At least a week’s worth of spanking, if she’s lucky.  Isabela stares at Aveline’s long fingers, draped over her bare stomach.  Isabela thinks she’s nothing if not lucky.

Mischief lives in her lips.  It shapes a smile Aveline doesn’t see.  Isabela’s toes come forward, hurtling froth and chilled droplets onto the woman sunbathing at her feet.

And nobody but the gulls fluttering in the cliffs can hear the report of Aveline’s screaming as it echoes . . . and how it dims suddenly, as if muffled.


	8. Anders/Karl - The Storeroom

The rice is a loss.

Karl lets himself imagine trying to sit at dinner with a bowl of rice now, remembering this moment; the storeroom scent of dried beans and turnips, the hands on his thighs, and the knobbed knees on the sack of rice.  Anders showing him how far he’s come.

How far Karl can go. 

The flat tongue cradles him.  Anders smiles with the faint, gold gleam of his eyes, and with the muscles of his throat.  A smile can be so much.  But even with Anders on him, eager, forgetful teeth and tight heat, Karl can count his own smiles on one hand.

His hips jerk.  Anders pries Karl’s fingers from the crate and tucks them into his hair. 

Karl presses into the suckling vortex, milked and shambling beneath the young mage’s hands.

Deep.  Perfect.  Karl’s teeth clack in the dark, finger’s tightening.

Anders goes farther each time.  And sometimes without Karl.


	9. Nathaniel/Anders - Nate bottoming from the top

Below him, Anders refuses to hide his obvious delight, among other, visible signs of approval.

“This would be easier if you stopped your ceaseless giggling.”  Nathaniel drops his head, shadowy hair hiding him from the mage’s grin.  There’s never been a moment like this.  Where he doesn’t know where to look, but knows exactly what he feels.  So fitted.  Carefully crafted.  Not like the bow-string and notch he knows.  But the disused blades, snug in their sheaths, that he’s always admired and rarely relied upon.

Anders bumps him forward.  Callused palms catch on the mage’s chest and Nathaniel tries not to hiss.  Another tease flashes from Anders’s lips, “You could sit the other direction if my. . .smile bothers you.”

The rogue rocks gently, testing the loss he feels, weighing it against the sharp intake of breath beneath his palms.  A surge, within and without.  The way the smile, framed by fanned hair, fades from mirth to ecstasy.

“Not for all the tea in Antiva.” Nathaniel smirks.


	10. Anders/Isabela - a prompt of "comfort after rejection"

“That feels. . .” He casts about, searching the floor as if words Isabela’s never heard might be found there.  None jump out at him.  His cock jumps, though, and Anders groans into the edge of her mattress.  Black blossoms tickle behind his closed eyes.

“I know.” says the pirate, and he can feel the breath of her, lacking disdain as much as the tickle of a beard, pushing across the cleft of his ass a moment before her tongue returns.  Isabela invades him, and he offers it.  She’s everything.  The joke of a thing inside him, shared with so few.  Anders pushes a hand under his hips, touching himself.

“I can’t. . .”

Her breath replaces the slick heat again, humid sea breeze on his skin.  “You can, sweet thing.”


	11. Leandra/Malcolm - on the run

“Sing something.”  Leandra commands from behind him in the buckboard.  Above them, the starry sky slips past, obscured here and there by the deeper black of the crowded forest path.  It’s not cold, though, and the trees beside the road carry the echoes of crickets and the fading tease of glowflies.  Even so, night running is less romantic than he envisioned.  Malcolm sighs and rubs his eyes.

“Something Ferelden?”  His mind rifles through the only songs he knows, the ones that cling to campfires and grimy teeth, and comes up with mercenary ballads and crude ditties devoted to large-breasted tavern girls.

“I don’t care.  Neither of us can sleep.”  She sags against him, back to back, with her head lolling on his shoulder.  If Garrett is grumpy, he makes no outward show of it.   _Good boy_ , Malcom thinks, smirking, and swishes the mule’s reigns.

“How about something from the elves?”

Leandra shrugs, her exhausted shoulders transferring some brief warmth to him.  So he begins, crooning low over the first few lines and tapping the leather straps against the mule’s rump as the song rolls out in the dark.

Malcolm keeps the song soft, tucking his chin over the deeper tones.  But after a few minutes Leandra reaches around and pokes him in the ribs.  The wagon slams into a rut, as if on command, and all three travel-weary souls bounce hard atop the bare wood.

“Hey, ow!”  He whispers viciously.

“You don’t know a lick of elven do you, love?”

Rubbing his tender ribs, Malcolm tries to crane around to give her a wounded look, and ends up flapping his hand at the pitiless darkness instead.  Leandra chuckles, dropping her head on his shoulder again.

“Neither do you.” He mutters sweetly, and tucks an arm behind him to squeeze her waist.


	12. Seneschal Bran/Serendipity - Pastry

“I’ll get fat,” he whines, but the elf holds her offering under his nose as patiently as a Chantry sister.

“Pish.”  Serendipity closes her eyes, inhaling cinnamon, and scoots closer to Bran on the bed.  “And even if you did. . .I like a man with appetite.”

He looks unconvinced, but pinches a portion of the sugar-dusted confection between his fingers.  “Very well.  But we’ll share it.”

Before he can sniff it or examine it further, she cups his hand and shoves the morsel into his mouth.  The instant, buttery warmth has Bran rolling his eyes in ecstasy.  “That’s amazing.” He manages between two more bites.  Serendipity beams at him, picking off bites for herself.  When she looks up from licking her fingers, Bran is staring at her.

“You’ve got sugar, just there.”  Tender fingers reach for her face, but then he seems to change tactics, something charming dancing behind those eyes.  Serendipity sits perfectly still, dying to giggle and groan, as her gentleman leans forward and kisses the sweet grains away from her nose and lips.


	13. Fenris/Zevran - What a big sword!

I cannot fathom why the creature is staring so intently.  We’re not so very different.  Perhaps I have as much blood stippling my face as he has.  Perhaps, as always, he is considering the most clever way to ask about the blighted markings.  And, perhaps he thinks the way to Hawke is through me.

Whatever the cause, I can take it no longer.

“What is it you want, assassin?”

The impertinent tug of his mouth returns.  It’s a smile of hidden meaning, of a type I have come to loathe.  Hawke claps him on back, but the elf takes a very long time dragging his eyes from me to the mage.  This _Zevran_ takes Hawke’s hand in a vigorous shake.

“I give you my sincerest congratulations, my friend.  That is a _very_ big sword.”

 Somewhere behind us, Isabela cackles and clears her throat.


	14. Anders/Nathaniel - Turnabout

“On your feet, mage.  Get up.”

The voice claws its way into the Fade, where Anders has submitted himself to a midday nap and a spot of naughty dreaming.  The dream in question, the lovely distraction he’s allowed himself while curled up in Nathaniel’s bunk, involves a younger version of Howe.  Anders has just gotten to the barn, peeking through knotted wood to spy on Nate milking the cows, a gentle sheen of sweat darkening the hair at his brow. . .

“Fire in the Keep!” Comes the voice again, more urgent, and smoky along the edge of its command.

Gasping, Anders loses his dream and flails to life on the bunk.

“What?!  I’m up.  I’m. . .”  Panic dies in his throat as he spies the rogue standing in the doorway.  Nate’s shoulders twitch with silent laughter.

“Get dressed.”

Blinking, Anders moves instinctively to his robes.  Except they aren’t draped across the covers where he left them.  Flopping to the edge of the bed, he sees that they aren’t on the floor either.  He closes his eyes, groaning.

“This will teach me to sleep in the nude.”

Nate nods solemnly, uncrossing his arms.  He moves to his locker and toes it open with a boot.

“There are alternatives to everything, you know.”

Anders leans forward to peek inside, and swears in a tongue he’s sure Nathaniel has never heard.

“You’re cruel.  Is this because of that crack about your sister?”

_________________________________________________________________

“I feel ridiculous.”  Anders mutters, shuffling down the stone corridor toward the common room with the rogue trailing behind.  “And everything is riding up, I just know it.”

When he reaches down to tug the leather breeches out of his crotch for the fourth time, he catches a glimpse of Nate’s appreciative observation.  At least the pants are tight, and that’s good for _something_ , he thinks.  Anders lifts his chin, smiling, and lingers on the gesture, long fingers pinching and pulling the leather, and then turning to cup and knead with his palm.

The effect isn’t as instantly charming as he would have hoped.  Howe only presses his mouth into a thin line and makes the space between them a little smaller by a step or two.

“Don’t stop sleeping naked.  Maybe I’ll give your robes back one day.” The voice will always surprise Anders, how it drops into a tone which should be terribly loud but tumbles out softly instead.  But, as he’s dealing with the shiver down his spine, it’s Nate’s hand that rivals his voice for softness.  It slides across the mage’s hip and skims lower around the curve of his ass.  Bow-worn fingers press the seam riding between Anders’s cheeks, and the mage exhales, leaning on Howe’s shoulder.

“You win.  I’ll wear the pants.”  And he says it only because it earns him a swift kiss, the nip of teeth on his lower lip, and a scalding hand at the front of the offending breeches.  As Anders pulls Nate against the wall with him, he’s already dreaming of the rogue pacing around the Keep in robes. . .when all his leathers mysteriously disappear.


	15. Cauthrien/Nathaniel - the wisdom of surrender

There are good reasons to surrender any given fight, and Nathaniel feels the woman above him knows every inch of those reasons as well as she knows the act of breathing.  Though perhaps few would watch her wield a blade, pitiless and precise, and think her capable of bending a knee in self-preservation.

He tucks his head beneath one arm, and groans heavily into the bed.

Cauthrien kneads his flesh, rolling muscle and tendon under fingers of impossible strength.  With her tutelage, his aching shoulders surrender their war on his sanity.  It helps infinitely that she is naked, and it’s a strange marriage of muscular bliss and temptation to have her seated across the backs of his bare thighs while she works comfort into his body.

“Copper for your thoughts?”

He feels her breath rush over his neck an instant after the thrilling warmth of her covers him.

“None are required.” Behind closed eyes, he lets the skin of his back memorize the contour of breasts and the pronouncement of ribs where she stretches out, mirroring him with her body.  “I was just thinking of surrender.”

“Very well. I can offer generous terms.” Her hands glide roughly up, across his arms, to pin his wrists.

“Actually, I was thinking of yours.”  Under the shadow of his elbow, he winces at the idiocy he is still capable of after all these years.  There is a reason, as understandable as any, that she doesn’t offer those stories. But she doesn’t go stiff, as he feared.

“Most people do.”  There is a painful pause, and with nothing in the curve of his arm or the bed beneath his cheek to guide his impression of her, he can only imagine the way she gives over the words with a sigh, and the hard set of her jaw above that long neck.

“I didn’t mean . . .”

“I don’t care.” The weight of her shifts.  It moves into action as effortless as the twist of a blade, and Nate feels her hands track his flank and lift his hips. Cauthrien slides back, wedging a knee between his thighs.  “Want to know what it feels like?”

Nose pressed to the scent of linen and skin, he nods.  And she keeps one hand pressed to the back of his neck, firm but kneading, as the other circles his hip to grasp the length of him.  Breathless, he tries to lift, to move and push into her first strokes.  But Cauthrien’s hands are willful things, and so his chest never leaves the bed and his cock is a tool for yet another lesson he’s grateful to have from her.

“Maker.” He grinds out between clenched teeth when her palm disappears and returns, slick with spit, to milk him slowly.  And it’s too slow where her thumb plays over his head.  Too slow where her fingers spread along the underside for this set of strokes, and then turn to grip him from above for the next few.  If she minds the way his hips jerk, it doesn’t show in the attention she gives to each pull.  Between his grunts, when he can think of something besides her fingers, and the swelling heat speeding through cock, and the way he’s leaking over the sheets . . .Nate imagines Cauthrien smiling against his skin where she kisses his back, sweat and breasts and encouragement, all while he turns his face against the bed and whines.

Then she stops, and fastens her hand so that her thumb can pinch just at the base of him, and Nathaniel feels the halted surge gather in his balls.  Redness fills the edges of his vision.

“Do you want to surrender?”  There’s so little triumph in those syllables.  The sound of her voice cuts through the snap of fire in his groin, and Cauthrien rubs his neck, soothing.  He needs fury, and he needs to fuck, and Nathaniel will give anything to be rid of the coiled pain in his cock.  But no words make themselves handy.  He only nods and whimpers, hips twitching relentlessly into her stilled fist. 

After a moment, the iron band around his cock softens, Cauthrien pumps quickly, and he comes with a muffled, delicious cry.  It doesn’t even matter that he collapses atop his own, wet spend.  He can breathe again, and it’s sweet as rain in a draught.

“Feels good to be alive, no?” She stretches out beside him, a wan smile playing on her lips.  “Live to fight another day.”

Nathaniel huffs and flops over onto his back.  “You are a wise woman.”

To this, she says nothing. The swing of her leg, and the weight of her returning to claim him is all the warning he needs.


	16. Carver/Merrill - Birthday pegging

“I would say this is the worst name-day ever.”  Carver begins after spitting out the bite-stick she offered him.  “But I think. . .ah . . .that my sixteenth was worse.”

Merrill pushes inside, watching with fascination as the last few inches of the smooth, slick ashwood phallus disappears.  Carver whines, pushing back.  A smile slinks across her lips, and she silently thanks Isabela for the odd gift, and the way it had made him blush.  Merrill is sure it’s still making him blush, even with his face crammed in the pillow.  “What did you get for that day?” she asks, as much with her hand on his rump as with her mouth.

Carver’s hips jerk, and he mumbles into cotton, “About a hundred bee-stings.”


	17. Bethany/Nathaniel - Keeping quiet

Nothing in the Keep is quiet.  Not the rats.  Not the interminable murmur of water on stone somewhere deep below them.  And certainly not the countless noses and mouths burbling through their sleep.  Still, Bethany looks over the shadow-rippled plane of Nate’s belly and wonders, when her mouth draws heat over the length of him just so - root to weeping tip – how he can manage not to make a sound?  Perturbed, she snaps a chill into her fingers and cups him low between his thighs.

“Andraste’s ASS!” Comes the hissing call of her triumph . . .a second before a chorus of shushing from the barracks.


	18. Fenris/Zevran - Leather

It’s unlike the leatherwork in Tevinter.  Finer, softer, and scented with exotic ash.  Much like the elf himself.  Fenris bows his head to the dip of skin at the base of Zevran’s neck, pushing with tongue and nose and hips at whatever he can; the stretch of leather, memory and skin.  The assassin smiles, pushing back, nose pressed to Fenris’s temple, voice reaching like a warm blade in his spine.

“I am fond of the way you smell, too.  Especially now.”


	19. Isabela/Fenris/Marian - OT3

“Again?”

“Not again.”

Marian and Fenris react together, with differing quirks of their eyebrows, but a distinct lack of protest behind their words.  Isabela rolls the elf away from the champion, ignoring his grunt, and takes Marian’s stained fingertips into her mouth.  She sucks thoughtfully, rolling her tongue over elfroot and glitterdust.  They suddenly pop from her lips, trailing wetly down her chest under Marian’s boneless wanderings.

“Let’s try the thing with the fire again!  Oh come on.  Look, I have a pitcher of water, just in case.”

There’s little either of them can do when she bounces the bed with her enthusiasm.  As usual, they can only hold on.


	20. Isabela/Aveline - Making good

It happens to the best rogues.  Sometimes Corff’s brew sneaks up Isabela.  That she paid for it (most of it) is almost worse than knowing too late when she’s had too much.  So, it’s the lighter purse she’s thinking of when she nearly tumbles down the steps to the bar.  But strong hands whip her upright, making her head clack inside itself.

Aveline.  Gauntlets decidedly cold on her bare arms.

“Well, you were bound to come after me one day, Big Girl.”  She reaches up to cup the woman’s jaw and doesn’t miss the way Aveline just sighs, rolling her eyes.  It’s too delicious, even with her head swimming.  A taunt is a weapon worth so much against the captain.  “Shall we play Please the Pirate or Chevalier’s Blush?”

“Oh, alright.  Let’s have it.” 

Isabela blinks, hnnging behind her faltering smile.  “Wha-?”

Then there’s a mouth claiming hers.  Armor, noticeably less cold than she imagined, presses her to the wall.  Aveline makes no sound, save for the secretive, wet ones that only Isabela can hear.  And, as with the brew, she realizes too late that the noises are hers.  She’s about to volley back, tongue lips rallying, shock giving way to a brilliant, questioning spark, when Aveline stops.  The flaming head cocks to the side, slim brows mocking.

“Is that all?  Well, color me disappointed.”


	21. Fenris/M!Hawke - bath

“You’re killing me.” Comes a grumbling from the doorway.  Fenris doesn’t look up.  A bath, and a warm one at that, is a treat he intends to savor.

“What a poor combatant you’ve become.”  Not everything must be urgency and a champion’s will.  Fenris sinks lower in the copper tub, water lapping at his chin.

“Utterly worthless.”  He nods coming forward anyway, tugging his gloves off with his teeth.  Which is, as far as Fenris can tell, wholly unnecessary.  Except that he likes the bright flash of Hawke’s teeth within his beard.

And he likes how Hawke doesn’t roll up his sleeves when one hand parts the water, parts his thighs like a curious sea creature, cupping and dragging with the swirl of the bath, and begins to stroke.  Fenris watches, and then joins, one hand floating atop the other. His head drops back, victorious sigh cut off by the beard and the lips and the nipping of teeth.  For a moment, he can only hear the brief laughter of water pattering on metal.





	22. Merrill/Carver/Isabela - "Lolly" for flutiebear

Merrill wakes in the middle of the night to the unsettling weight of another body dropping onto the edge of her musty old mattress.

“Where did you find these, poppet?” Whispers a voice in the dark.  Or maybe the voice itself is dark, and sweet as blackberries.

The mage chokes on her gargled cry, and snaps a flame into her palm, which dances instantly across Isabela’s curious face.  She laughs, and Merrill reaches to flick the spell into her fireplace.  This kind of visit is common among the pirate’s friends, as she understands it.  And her eyes go dreamy with a little pride that Isabela considers her hovel worth plundering.  When she pushes the covers back and wriggles her cold toes toward the fire, she finally casts a glance at the objects sticking out at odd angles from Isabela’s tight fist.

 “I. . .well, I suppose I stole them, to be honest.”  And she fights not to clutch them back.

“Oh, don’t ever ruin the beauty of one with the taint of the other!”  The lollipops tumble to the bed, and they both look down at the collection of treats, their colors hidden and muted by the twisted whisper of fine cheesecloth.

“You aren’t angry?”

Isabela pokes through the pile and offers one, a red one, to Merrill.

“I’m impressed.  When did you lift them from me?”  She takes one for herself, this one amber-colored. 

“You fell asleep in Varric’s room after cards . . . and too much ale.”  The elf licks, finding the taste of young cherries, tart and clear.

“I do that, yes.”  Bela’s voice rolls like a shadow around her sweet, and the stick shifts between her lips. 

“He dared me.” It had been a casual dare at first, but Varric goaded her, made her feel like such a thing was beyond her talents.  She couldn’t stand it.  So she had crept into the adjoining room, and snatched the bundle that was buried deepest in the chest beside the Rivaini’s bed. 

She wants to ask, now, why it hadn’t been locked.  But instead Merrill grins at her midnight visitor, biting the softening wooden stick. “I could never resist a dare.”

“Me neither, kitten.”  They share a smile, and for a few moments the only sound in Merrill’s dingy corner of Lowtown is the sharp clack of tongues pulling at candy and the satisfied sigh of the fireplace. “How about another dare then?”

______________________________________________________________________

She watches Carver take the proffered sweet, overcome with the kind of anticipation usually reserved for wedding feasts and shiny new staves.

When the lolly disappears past the pink swell of his lips, the Templar’s eyes bulge.  Merrill snickers. . .then guffaws, clutching her belly as Carver stares at her.  He sucks thoughtfully, and the very thing she’s been waiting for dawns on him.

“Andraste’s ass, where has this been, Merrill?”

Her belly hurts from unspent laughter, but she manages to pull herself together long enough to lean close, and tug at the hair that’s getting too long over the strange curve of his ear.

“I’ll give you a hint.  _Not_ in my bum. . .”


	23. Merrill and Isabela revisit Sundermount - "Carrion"

When she takes too long, stares a little too deeply at the tamped-down circle of grass, Isabela touches Merrill’s elbow, sliding her hand inside and down into the smaller clench of the elf’s fingers.

“Isabela, can you tell me.  I can’t be sure.”  The chime of her voice climbs across a mountain of syllables. “There isn’t any blood left, right?”

“No, kitten.”

“Oh.”

Neither wants to imagine out loud why there aren’t any wagons or tents.  Where the limbs and shoe-less feet that bent those blades of grass have gone to when they hadn’t any life to drag them.  It’s enough to send gooseflesh marching over Bela’s back. 

If Merrill sees blood she doesn’t say so outright.

“We shouldn’t stay . . .long.” The pirate squeezes her palm, and the elf doesn’t rest her head on the broad shoulder for once.


	24. Leandra/Malcolm - Modern/AU "Miata"

“They look like cockroaches.”  Malcolm grins, teeth pinching the filter of his cigarette.  It doesn’t occur to her to hate the smell of it, brown and thick in her nose.  There are moment when that’s perfectly fine.  Like this . . .after fucking like adults who remember how to be teenagers with better moves.  A cigarette is the least of her worries, the least of the lines forming around her mouth.  And, there’s the man, naked and curled into the frame of the window with his long arms thrown around his knees. 

“Toss a brick through goddamned windshield.”  Leandra whines from the downy muffle of her pillow.  The car alarm continues.  It’s cool and wet outside the apartment, and as he leans further out to smoke in that misty calm, she watches how Malcolm’s beard reaches around his jaw to just under his ear.  From the bed she can see brightness looming beyond the fire escape.  “How many are there now?”

“Four. No, five.” He exhales, tapping into the ashtray full of rainwater.

Leandra scoots to the edge of the bed, dons her kimono (a gift from Garrett’s latest trip to the Silk Road), and doesn’t bother to belt it as she joins her husband at the window.

There are five Miatas on their block now.  _Thank you nineties_.  With their rainslicked bodies and the delicate, jutting antennas they do look like roaches.  The kind you can’t see until they’re right on top of you.  The kind that _fly_.  Only these have obnoxious alarms.  A smile forms at the thought of cockroaches blaring with mish-mashed alarm calls.  Then she shudders.

She takes the cigarette and drags, grimacing more at the soggy tip than the flat burn in her lungs.  Beside her, Malcolm’s eyelashes curve over the faintest freckles she’s ever seen.  They share the cigarette, and take in the silent, floating umbrellas on the sidewalk below.  One day, this too will be gone, she thinks.  No more warm eyes and unkempt brows.  And it’s a coarse thread to pull at, but she hopes he goes first.  There’s oblivion to think of, and though she’s sure she can do this alone . . .it’s a given that he won’t be able to.  Malcolm watches her smoke, and maybe he’s thinking of the joints they shared, or the coke they didn’t.  Almost surely he’s thinking of how lucky they are, because it’s what he always _says_ when she winds a thick mass of his hair around her finger.   _We’re so fucking lucky._

His hand sweeps past silk to pull her close.  Leandra holds the cigarette outside the window, arm around his shoulders, and exhales a plume over the face at her breast. Black lashes and beard hairs tickle her chest.  “We should think about curtains.”

Teeth worry at her nipple, his lips catching skin and cold rain that drips from the overhang.  Malcolm’s hand reaches beneath the swell of her ass, a path of flesh and heat he knows by heart, and teases new meaning from her with each stroke.  When his chilled fingertips slip inside, Leandra doesn’t drop the cigarette.  She hangs on, curtains and Mazdas stuttering away like dying alarms, and she climbs into his lap.


	25. Isabela, Varric, Hawke, Anders . . ."Isabela takes the stairs" - for spicyshimmy

“I say we find another way around.”  Isabela crosses her arms, the toe of her boot shuffling in the soft moss.  To Varric, though, it sounds more like heels digging-in.

“Come on, Rivaini, it’ll be like old times.”  He offers.  But these aren’t Kirkwall’s wide, flat stairs.  And this isn’t a Marcher spring.  She refuses to look at the steep curve of it.

Hawke coughs, claw twanging on the railing in an impatient rhythm. “Maybe if we stare at it long enough it’ll become a dragon.

“A friendly dragon.”  Anders says quietly.  The first words, bright and clear, in countless miles.  And it’s such a brilliant mimicry of Merrill that Varric sort of wheels on the mage, gaping just a little too long.  Because he’s not really there.  Or anywhere inside his tatters and his boots.  He’s just waiting on the utterance of direction, like the rest of them.

Varric can’t stand it.  If he’s going to be lollygagging, he’d like it to be somewhere less. . .obnoxiously verdant.  And preferably with a beer.  “Let’s ponder the merits of travel-by-dragon as we go, what say?”

With that, he lurches onto the stairs, the ones that have no visible ending in the loamy press of earth and stone.  And the others follow in a fashion Varric refuses to acknowledge.  It was okay for this set of miles, and the few that followed over terrain none of them could fathom.  But this was untenable.  It shouldn’t be this way.

Before rounding the first stone landing, he looks back to find the pirate watching them from the bottom.   Leather clad fingers go to her eyes, downcast, seeming to examine the deep drifts of burgundy leaves at her feet.  She catches him watching, and slowly, as if her legs were mutinous, Isabela takes the stairs.


	26. Fenris/Zevran (and Isabela) - Black hair, for blackcoffeeandink

“I don’t know if you’ll pass close inspection.  Rivainis do love a good head of hair.”  Isabela dunks the large pitcher into the bath, into the abyss between two sets of elven knees, and draws up the water.  It plips and plops from her elbows.  “But _I’m_ certainly happy with the results.”

“My dear, you’re the only one that matters.” Zevran’s eyes close, and water tumbles over his head, sending the black, foamy dye away from his hair to streak over his shoulders.  It collects in the bath, and Fenris watches it writhe, a brief maelstrom obscuring the assassin’s body beneath the water.  The pitcher goes in again.  And Fenris raises the bottle of wine to his lips.  Over the top of it, he doesn’t hide his open appraisal of the other elf. 

Newly black hair, sleek, forming itself to tan skin.  Wet tattoos reassigning themselves as he moves.  And he moves, always, even by bare breaths. His thighs clasp Fenris’s, his toes curling deftly around hips.  Fenris echoes, unseen beneath the water.  But, as Isabela pours the pitcher over his own head, something occurs to him about Zevran’s disguise.

And though this time it is the Antivan who leans forward, rapt and a little drunk, to take in Fenris’s black hair, the latter sets his bottle down and reaches out to trace his fingertips over golden eyebrows.

“These don’t match.” He murmurs, feeling the fine hairs under his fingers, and appreciates the things that do mirror each other . . .now. 

“Matching is overrated.  At times.”  Zevran’s voice is scalded cinnamon.  He tugs Fenris’s hand away, and under Isabela’s pleased humming, he captures the similar lips.  Fenris’s lips.  His tongue.  Hungry under the fall of his hair.  The wet drip of crow’s wings.   

“Don’t mind me, boys.” Comes the encouragement that is entirely unnecessary.  He doesn’t mind.  Less and less every day.  Fenris plants his hands, slick and gripping, on the edge of the tub and moves over Zevran.  There are hands beneath the grayish foam, skating his hips, and he drags the assassin nearly underwater.  They create greater waves in the smallish tub. 

Fenris releases a quiet moan, jaw trembling as fully as his arms where they brace.  When Zevran lifts against him, Fenris opens his eyes to take in the mouth, the stroking hand, and the whorls of black hair like flags of silk in water.

 


	27. Carver/Fenris - "Ownership" D/s

He only came for the lyrium.  In the twisting, ruined corridors of a magister’s estate there were bound to be a few bottles left unbroken.  It’s only when he kneels so readily, knees and cheek and heart chilled by a floor of foreign marble, that Carver understands that nothing in Fenris’s dungeon of a life is unbroken. 

“Up,” is all he says, and that voice strikes like flint; barely a command, but with heat to guide a painful suffusion in Carver’s dick.  The Templar lifts his ass high, reaching up to fill the clasp of gauntlets.  It’s ice and claws on his skin.  This is no dragon coming to whisk him away from difficult things.  Or maybe it is.  The promise of lyrium keeps him hard, wrests his eye open when he would squeeze them shut, and Carver watches dust skitter across the marble beside his cheek when Fenris finally closes in on him.

He’ll forget the way the spit in mouth sharpens to a tang as he’s stretched, and the cold burn of his cock whipping between his legs when Fenris ploughs him.  These will be sublimated with lighter desires. But Carver will remember how hard he comes when the exquisite churning in his bowels slows and alters its course. . .and a strong, bare foot settles on the back of his neck, transmitting weight and ownership.  And Fenris plunges deeper.


	28. Carver/Merrill - "Braids"

When she comes – when she _screams_ – Carver cringes a little between her haphazard legs.  Merrill’s always been vocal, but she tugs so damn hard on his hair this time that his eyes water.  And at least he worries less about who can hear them while he’s busy aching all over his scalp. 

When he reaches up to rub his head Carver finds lumps scattered throughout his hair.

“Merrill.  Maker’s cock, what. . ?” He trails off, fingering a tight little plait.  “Braids?  _You braided my hair_?  While I was. . .”

He scowls across her belly, and Merrill shimmies onto her elbows to gape at him, sated and unbothered. She teases an unraveling braid with her toes.

“Well, you were down there so long.”

As he watches her smile deepen, rubbing the taste of her against the backs of his teeth, he thinks of Merrill’s own braids.  The impossibility of trying to do the same to her hair, with her mouth on him.  It makes him harder still to think of the time before him, and the deft fingers (maybe a pirate’s fingers) that might have worked those strands with Merrill’s face buried sweetly between mysterious thighs. 

Carver scrunches his eyes closed.  Knowing Isabela all these years had so many unintended consequences.  He wondered if he could ever thank her properly for unlocking his imagination so . . .relentlessly.


	29. Anders - "Handful" (wank)

Anders dreams of touching himself.  Not as a particular fantasy, but because the years have found him more at home in his own hands than in anyone else’s.  In this dream, trapped in a shambling, shifting darkness that is part clinic and part bedroom, Anders is cold except for the heat he delivers to himself.  Cold is blue, electric.  As it has been since he welcomed Justice.  But these aren’t the spirit’s hands on his dick, or holding back his smalls to cup his balls.  These, he insists with the pinch of his mouth, are _his_ hands.  Anders jerks his hips, hand blurring over the shaft, rounding the head, and back again smoothly.  In a dream like this, he is blissfully slick, and rigid, and hot under each curved finger.

Teeth pull at his lower lip.  His teeth.  Though, in most other ways they are Hawke’s.  Hawke bites.  The way his thumb drags, rubbing the foreskin, is a Garrett move.  The slowing of rhythm, in the face of a petulant hiss, is something Anders would never do to himself.  So the dream must be a fulfillment in some way.  The phantom touch carries love to his aching skin, squeezing, milking the cry Anders might refuse otherwise. But it means fuck-all.  All it amounts to, for each stroke dying at the base of his cock, is another palmful of ragged ecstasy . . .alone, where everything is similarly worn down.  Anders moans.  He’s close, shuddering in the bone-deep places where his hips jump between bed and hand.

And when the only urge remaining on the failure of his tongue is _out, out, fuck, come_ . . .Anders wakes, gasping.

“ _Maker_.  What I wouldn’t give to be a somniari wandering into _that_ little dream.”

The voice rumbling over his shoulder is warm, and broken by sleep.  Anders blinks.

Beside him, Garrett’s smile is cloistered in the well of his pillow.  So much of it had been half-real, though . . .so that for a moment Anders holds onto the despair instead of the things he can feel as he wakes.

He is wet.  He is spent.  His hands. His tongue inside his teeth.

But truer things make themselves known.  Hawke brushes his shoulder, his jaw, with kisses, and moves a carelessly comfortable new set of hands over his body.


	30. Merrill and Anders contemplate the Hawkes - Take what you can get

Merrill dreams of hawks.  Two birds circling down, racing the low sweep of a cliff only to pull up and glide across a gilded plain of grass. One is red, the other black, and their shadows gallop over the golden sway of switchgrass, drifting apart as invisible currents take them to the edge of sunset.

_Take what you can get._

She wakes.

Outside her hovel, the alienage is steeped in moonlight and stagnant, late-spring air.  Unseen insects hold their chirruping as she moves from the doorway to the tree to the pillar beside Nyssa’s stall.  Merrill traces her fingertips over the language on the plaque, foreign and dull, and thinks of how Anders had looked as they watched the brothers disappear into the cave.

.

.

“Take what you can get.” Anders murmurs.  It startles her, mostly because he’s even less chatty with her than ever.  And there wasn’t much of that to begin with.

Merrill looks past the greasy, bedraggled feathers that seem forever in her way, and follows the tall mage’s eyes to the pair of men bowing their heads together over the entrance to the bandit’s hideaway.

Carver cuts his eyes back to her, rolling them playfully in response to Garrett’s instruction.  She beams at him, and then looks down at her feet, comparing them to Anders’s boots. . .especially to the tips, where she can see his toes poking out of a hole.

“I do,” she says, quietly, memory and skin jumping at the thought of Carver’s big arms under her palms. The smell of metal and sweat. “Doesn’t everybody?  Don’t you?”

“Not anymore.” For a moment, he looks to be open, a small crack where a clever elf might slip in and push. But whatever possessed him to speak to her in the first place vanishes, snaps shut under the weight of something Merrill doesn’t understand.

Together, they look at the elder Hawke.  And where Anders can’t seem to make that gaze stick, can’t stop himself from tucking his chin, Merrill never grasps the human habit of averting her eyes.  Instead, she watches everything, afraid to miss a flash of teeth or a wink.  None appear, though, and Anders fingers the carving on his staff rather than talk.

She shrugs, more for herself than for him.

“Isabela says it’s okay to be a little selfish.”

When he only tips his head, ghost of a smirk cracking his lips, Merrill suddenly feels too heavy to walk.  She wonders if he has that effect on Hawke, too.  And, blinking at Carver’s broad back, the phantom weight shifts from her shoulders to her heart for no reason she can see.

“Maybe she’s wrong, though.” Merrill says.


	31. Varric and the ball of twine - "Pink" for iheartapostates

[CHECK OUT THE ART CHARLOTTE MADE FOR THIS!](http://iheartapostates.tumblr.com/post/20945245279/pink-for-iheartapostates-who-asked-for-the)

 

_Tethras,_

_Your friend is adorable.  If you don’t keep her off the docks she’s going to make an adorable corpse._

_K_

Varric folded the parchment into a tiny, tight little square and then tossed it into the fire.  Burning it made him no warmer.

“I followed her as far as the Qunari gates last night,” Isabela sighed.  She’d laughed at every other warning note Varric had shared with her.  Tomwise reporting Merrill wandering in Darktown at night.  Lusine asking him to keep her away from the Rose’s door at sunset. But this was the first threat.  From the carta, no less.  Isabela’s faint smirk faded, and she simply tossed the ball of pink twine up into the smoke clinging to the ceiling, catching it again without mirth. The pirate held the ball out in front of her, as if gripping a small elven chin.  “She was gaping at them like they were Tevinter oliphants or something.”

He groaned, leaning over to snatch the twine before Isabela could throw it again.  What if it ended up in the fire?  Turning it over in his hands, he wondered if he needed it more than Daisy did.

“It isn’t funny.  She’s costing me a fortune.”

“The only thing I’m laughing at is the thought of you buying pink twine off Elegant.”  She tipped the heavy, stone chair back on two legs, her own impressive appendages pushing against his table.  Varric ground his jaw and bit his tongue against a pointless reminder about feet on his furniture.

Isabela didn’t have to know it had been Worthy who sold him the only ball of pink twine in all of Kirkwall.  That he’d paid more for it than his last pair of boots. Or that he’d have paid twice as much just to see the string wending through his city, and feel this uncomfortable tightness lift from his chest.

Varric pocketed the twine.  It was odd knowing the precise color of his undoing.  He'd have bet a sov it would have been red.


	32. Anders/Nate - "Dvořák" (for iapetusneume, from A Chord-verse Anders and Nate)

“Why here?”  Anders murmurs.  Though, with his chin snagging on the elastic at my hips, lips caught in a delicious drag from navel to parts lower, the sound of it is more like ‘wai hurr?’

“Because it’s cheaper than a hotel.”  I reply, and he laughs less at my joke than at the way my head bangs against the piano when he licks me.  In his mouth, it’s like summer and pressure.  I’m there, but I’m also in the practice room, eyes rolling over the contoured ceiling when they should be trained on the little window in the door.  We booked it for more than this, but I’m not complaining.  Anders pulls me to the edge of the bench and my elbows slip to the keys.  Or where they keys would be if I hadn’t put the lid down.  One day practicality simply won’t occur to me.  With the hot palm cupping me through my briefs, I don’t know if I’m glad it’s not today.   I mutter, “Fuck. Who needs Dvořák?”




When the reddened mouth slides off me, when it smiles, I’d like so much to just live in it.  Where it’s slick and in love.  Anders nods, “Didn’t I say that not ten minutes ago?”

“You can’t do this every time you don’t want to practice.”  There’s not a part of me that believes a word I’ve said.  Mostly because the arch of an eyebrow is followed by the return of summer, wet and humming over my cock.  And who wouldn’t chuck out a centuries-dead git for that every time?


	33. Varric recounts the "first story" he was ever told

“One day, it will all be ours again.”  Varric’s imitation of his father will mean little to this audience, but it feels like wicked fun while he’s half-drunk. He clears his throat and drops his arms from their grand, sweeping gesture.

“That’s the first story you remember?”  Hawke snakes a finger around the dwarf’s glass and downs the rest of his whiskey when she thinks he’s not looking.  She should know better.  He’s always looking.

“If that’s a story I’m a nug’s uncle,” mutters Carver.

“Didn’t you hear it?  All the plot twists and character flaws were right there.” He swallows a disgusted snort that threatens to bubble up every time they ask about his family. "Honor.  Lies.  Intrigue. Romance. . . failure."  He starts to reach for his glass, drumming thick fingers on the table between Hawke’s gauntlets.  This close, she’ll hear how broken the tale really is.  Varric’s voice is soft around the alcohol in his throat, “The best part is the ending.”

“That’s never the best part.” She says.  Under the table, their boots nudge together and Varric’s sure he’s not drunk enough for her to be right.  Not this time.


	34. Anders - "Rango" crossover

When he drags the unfamiliar weight from his head, Anders stares down at it in disbelief.  It’s a hat, unlike any he’s ever seen, with a wide brim and a stiff crown. Before he actually sees the Fade around him, Anders feels it; a violet sickness leeching into his skin.  But he’s bothered less by the buzzing around him than by the sensation of a third, awfully large appendage.

“Don’t be a tail.” He whispers to no one who can hear him.  If not a tail, what would he rather it be?  Of course it’s a tail.  Curling at the tip, heavy and mottled green.  “Oh, Maker.”

As the Fade titters in his ear, Anders counts off the things he knows: the tail, the garish shirt, the pantslessness (and he’s not complaining about that except there appears to be a definite lack of equipment he’d grown rather fond of), the hat, the fingers numbering four on each hand. . .and the curious ability to look in all directions at once.

He blinks, though here there has never been a need for it, “Who am I?”

But, he doesn’t need a glass to see that he’s a lizard.  Nothing answers back to confirm or deny.  So, Anders places the hat, with some awkward care, back on his lopsided square of a head and walks the Fade with renewed purpose.  Yes, a lizard, he thinks.  “But a _free_ lizard.”


	35. Anders/Varric - "Expectation" for cypheroftyr

“I suspected as much.” Says Varric, but he’s standing just outside the cramped bathing room.  Just so Anders can see the crook of his nose in the sliver of light left by the cracked door, and how the dwarf’s face doesn’t peer into the room, but down past his folded arms.  Varric’s shirtsleeves are rolled up, too. “You only want me for my bath.”

“And your bar tab.  And your clean sheets.” Anders’s ass slips in the tub, wrinkled toes floating above the surface. This room, and its owner, can hold a man like Anders with a grip that feels less like a death-note than other mansions he’s visited time and time again.  He glances at the door again, fingers under the bathwater skimming his stomach. “Join me?  It’s still warm.”

He doesn’t expect.  Long past that corpse of a thing. But the voice just beyond the door sounds like the last dregs of whiskey rattling in the bottle. And though he can’t be sure without seeing more, Anders thinks the protracted pause is followed by a buckle, and a series of buttons. Suddenly, expectation drags its bones across the floor. Anders swallows, touching himself lightly.

“Blondie, even if I wanted to there’s not enough room in there for you and me. To say nothing of my. . .ego.” When Varric laughs, warm and dark behind the door, Anders closes his eyes.

“Maybe you don’t remember the dimensions in here.” The words in his throat go thick.  Maker, he’s worse at this than he remembers. Hair and skin and warm water glide beneath his fingers.

“I’m bigger than I look.” Varric replies as the sliver of light at the door goes dim under his shadow; his bulk overwhelming, surprising, in the physical as much as the narrative. And Anders smiles into the swish of water lapping at his chest.

“Could have fooled me.” He murmurs, palm cupping between his own legs.

“Who says I haven’t?”

The door gives up its sham of a barrier, and Varric’s jaw flexes above the bared chest.  The bare _everything else_ goes beyond the pleasure of expectancy for Anders.  There isn’t enough room for both of them.  But the mouth covering his tastes like pipe smoke, sweet and burnt, and the mage is happy enough to shrink into the tub for whatever accommodation can be made.


	36. Merrill and Fenris have a moment - "The Smallest Hunter"

She finds Fenris hunched over, apart from the group, and instantly worries that he’s hurt and won’t seek aid.  Though Merrill’s getting used to the idea that he might never show her the same concern, it doesn’t staunch the flow of hers.

When she peeks over his shoulder, where it obscures a rocky outcrop looking over the coast, she spies not a wound but something far more curious.  And interesting.

“It’s a good trap,” says the elf when she steps too close, and Merrill can hear the not-quite version of a smile just at the corners of his words.  Between the rocks she sees a silken web, intricate and unbroken. 

“Oh, you _like_ spiders then?” She grips her elbows, looking for the web’s creator somewhere deep in the crags.  It’ll be small, at least.  Small she can handle.  But it’s Fenris that somehow seems more twisty than usual.

“I…admire them.  I suppose.”

He holds up the gleaming edge of his gauntlet and shows her the spinner.  The creature moves eight unafraid legs across the span of his fingers, testing and tapping.  Its body reminds Merrill of worse enemies, of course, but in the warrior’s hand it looks deeply natural and she suddenly aches for the woods.  For Tamlen.  And for the bend of his vallaslin.  The gritty soil digs into her toes.

“Me too.  But they’re a little sad as well.”  She cups her palm under his hand, where the wriggling spider sways on her silk, and catches it up.  The pinprick feet tickle her skin. “So alone.”

“Hunting is a lonely art.” Fenris replies.  She rolls her palm, her knuckles, her wrist, following the little spinner’s journey across these strange new planes.  The low voice, the one that touches empty hallways, does not put her off, for once.

“Not the way we do it.” Merrill murmurs down at the spider, and past it, to find the sourness ebbing from a green gaze.  Fenris looks over his shoulder at the group and finally nods at her.

Together, they return the spider to her work, and straighten up to go about theirs.


	37. Anders/Nathaniel (for iapetusneume, who asked for bathroom hijinx) - "Bach" (A Chord)

 

It takes a minute, while he gulps air and we slump in the stall with the random thump of the Man’s crowd behind thin walls.  It takes a minute for him to discover what I’ve done.  But he gets to it.

“That was …”Anders licks his lips and doesn’t tuck himself back into his corduroys right away.  Not with me using him to gain my feet.  He smiles. “I thought you were rehearsing Bach these days. Not bloody cocksucking.”

“Enjoying the art of _practice_ usually mean I excel faster.” I rub myself and think of the crud that’s probably on my knees.  But I also take a moment to watch Anders breathe, back against the stall, and hook a lazy finger into my waistband with eyes wide open.

He moves on me while it sinks in, either the muscle-relief or his appreciation, and he’ll figure out what else is in store soon enough.  It just takes a minute while he pushes me harder to the opposite wall, opening my jeans.  Then he gets to it.

“Can’t compete with your musical prowess, but…”  Lips on my nose, my chin, kissing while his hands go from needy to groping, halted curiosity.   Anders looks at me dead in the eye, hot fingers cupping.  “Did you …shave your balls?”

“If I did?” God, was it stupid?  Even if he asks I won’t have a proper reason _why_.

“You sneaky devil!  Oh, that’s marvelous.” He whispers, a sound so fucking _pleased_ I could die, and watches my eyes, how it tickles straight through me when his middle finger slides back and forth.  We’re slipping down the stall until Anders puts a hand to my chest and sinks to the floor.  Somewhere in the bar beyond the stall, beyond the door we locked, a woman cackles loud as a goose.  And it feels as prickly as I will in a few days. 

But before that, I get a tongue like velvet.  I get tasted for more surprises.  I get everything, and struggle not to feel like I didn’t earn it at all.


	38. Up a Tree - Sigrun gets stuck (for Charlotte)

“Maybe we can catch her? Have her jump into a tarp all stretched out.” Anders puts a finger to his chin. But Nathaniel negates this with a grave head-shake.

“Risky. She’s heavier than she looks.” 

“And how would you know?” Anders smiles.

“Velanna.” He points, watching her knead her lower back and scowl into the dirt. “Who do you think boosted her into the tree?”

The Warden snickers then, hands on hips, as they all turn to give Velanna the force of their amusement. She rubs her shoulders where there may or may not be a set of dwarven bootprints reddening the flesh. Sigrun is pretty sure she’s fine, though. Sturdier than she looks. And it should have been the elf climbing the blighted tree anyway. It should have been any one of the sodding humans who were accustomed to heights and trees and …heights.

“Yes, I attempted to help Anders’ idiotic pet.” Velanna picks at the bark of the tree, eyes following it upward to give Sigrun a sympathetic look before swinging back to the group. “What? It was better than another night of pitiful wailing.”

Sigrun hazards a peek at the ground, feeling a wail of her own stick to the back of her throat. Is it really all that high? No, it’s much worse. And she finds her so-called friends gathered a thousand feet below, among the tree’s lattice of roots and the shifting, red carpet of leaves. Then Oghren joins them in the clearing. He sidles up with a belch and doesn’t hide his flushed joy.

“How’dja manage that, squirt?” He beams up at her and she wishes she had anything to hurl down at his stupid grin.

“Just leave me here. Go on. I’ll figure it out. Stones, just go away!” Sigrun waves at them, a flapping, dismissive gesture. And because she’s so high up they don’t hear her mutter, “You’d think there weren’t worse things than being dead.”

Pounce meows in her ear, crouched unhappily on the branch above her head. “Shut it, fishbreath. This is your fault.”


	39. Cullen/Bethany - for cheesiestart

Cullen doesn’t tell because he can’t. And it’s another part of wanting it this way, all the way back to wanting in the first place. The first taste was bitter, addictive, and he hadn’t told anyone then, either. So, it’s no surprise he doesn’t tell anyone about Bethany’s smalls stuffed into his mouth against his cries, or how he focuses on the taste of them with his eyes squeezed shut. Nerves vacillating like diplomats over pain and pleasure.

What would he say? Cullen’s got imagination enough, now, for getting hard in the middle of drills. For swinging a sword and seeing the flash of her teeth, white and perfect, in the sun-blind edge of the blade. Harder still when she’s not there to watch him strip, bathe, fingers tracing new scars too small and precise to be dutiful injuries. How to describe his newest duties … To start, on your knees. Don’t all devotions begin this way? Cullen knows the Chant, too, but it’s further from his heart than the squeal, the song, in his lungs when her fingers move inside him. And he can’t do anything but sweat and plead and love her.

There’s no telling anyone that he knows how to be exalted.


	40. Hawke/Anders - "Inability" (for cannibaljambox, who requested a loving D/s)

“Don’t pull.”  Hawke pauses, eyes flicking to the skin he’s worried over.  There are no abrasions, though, and Anders isn’t pulling.  No, he’s pushing.  What a surprise.  Hawke waits for Anders to settle, listening too contentedly to the rain entreating conversation at the window, and when the only sound in the room is breath, and the snap of fire, he continues.

“Be still and I’ll give you what you need.”  He jerks aside the robe, nails scraping his own skin, skimming a nipple.  If Anders wants to speak, he sucks the inside of his cheek instead.  Instructions have gone better than Hawke imagined.  Anders hasn’t spoken in an hour.  And Hawke’s never been a great leader.  Maybe, he thinks, it’s all about numbers.  Two seems the most he can handle.  So he handles.  Stroking, raising an eyebrow if he feels the hips below his jump too high, compel too much friction.  One day it’ll get him into trouble.  One day it’ll be worse than this.

“I’m moving up now.  Don’t try anything.”  Hawke takes the shift as an opportunity to test.  He’s ready to go, ready to yank the ropes and put this play behind them.  But it’s something new, and worth keeping beside dusty bottles and raven feathers, this look in Anders’s eye when Hawke kisses his naked chest, widens his knees around that body.  Unblinking, limpid, Anders watches him descend, and catches him the only way he’s been allowed. 

“Love, you don’t know.”  His voice rushes like his body wants to.  But Hawke smiles around the pressure, breaks a little for them both, and works himself down slowly. “Ah, you’re doing so well.  Better than I would.”  And it’s true. 

Though his jaw jumps at every inch he gains, Anders remains quiet and still.  The ropes never go taut, and that’s why Hawke can’t look at them any more.  Not the way they cross the headboard like the chains in the bay.  He can’t look at the shadows arcing there above Anders’s head.  Not halfway in, hard and breathing like a caged thing. Not the way he’s supposed to.  So it ends there.

“Maker, just …”  His growl turning wet, or maybe his eyes, Hawke tugs the ropes, watching them fall and marking how loose it all feels now;  Anders inside, moving without being told, and still silent for some reason.  The ceiling sways above him, bed squawking as they fuck, and Hawke feels a little lost without their unusual arrangement. 

Which is, he assumes, the burden of being free.


	41. Kolyat/Mouse - Headcanon rambling

the TL;DR headcanon for Mouse (and Kolyat) that i mulled-over while in the shower.

Mouse has been slightly obsessed with Kolyat since the early days.  Since the first holos that Thane showed him. Since well into the period when he picked up sex-work in addition to carrying around secrets from one shadowy face to another.  It felt like he grew up with a neighborhood friend, even if it was one who never knew he existed. And he never lived in anything CLOSE to a neighborhood. The young drell in Thane’s holos grows, but Mouse stays pretty small…almost invisible.  Stronger than he looks, but only just barely.

In my headcanon, Miranda recruits Mouse.  She keeps him in the service of Cerberus as an intel-gatherer, and pays him well enough that he can pass on the sketchier jobs.  The ones with piss-poor odds.  It’s Mouse who gives her Thane’s name when the time comes.  Maybe he does it because Miranda is good to him (and there have been few enough people who are good, much less good to _him_ , that the connection he makes is instant, if naive)  She reminds him of a movie star and a sleek pistol at the same time, and he sees the value in the job she’s offering.  Mouse knows about Thane’s Keprals before anyone else.  He doesn’t have the first clue about assassin pension plans, or what Kolyat’s aunts and uncles might do when the worst does come to pass, but he knows Cerberus pays well and that saving a crap-ton of people would weigh pretty heavily on the better side of the everlasting scales. (If there’s someone keeping records, Mouse isn’t entirely convinced, but it can’t hurt to rack up good karma in either case)  And he wants Kolyat to be taken care of, for some reason.  At night, he lines up the holos on his little table, smallest Kolyat to largest Kolyat, and imagines the drell at an art school. Or maybe even a culinary academy since he’s heard that drell have some super special senses.

Years after she’s gone, years into Kolyat’s anger…they finally meet for the first time on the Citadel.  And Mouse acts like a complete spaz.  Kolyat just wants information, needs a bunch of personal stuff that Mouse isn’t privileged enough to give.  Against what little good judgement he has, Mouse points Kolyat to a contract.  And it’s not painting or cooking.  He sure as shit never pictured Kolyat holding a gun, much less pulling jobs like his dad.  So, it goes poorly for Mouse when he meets the kid he grew up with…but didn’t.  Because Kolyat is tall and lean, and smells like leather and oranges.  He’s raw, angry in a way Mouse has never pictured from the holos, and the dimensions of the younger Krios in person make Mouse ache.

It’s his fucking type, alright. 

Lots of secrets to find in the dark, and big eyes to swallow him up.  He does whatever Kolyat wants, opens passages that should stay closed, because pleasing people is something he can do.  Something he excels at.  He blushes because the holos are actually in his pocket while he talks to Kolyat.  And when the tall drell disappears into the Wards, Mouse keeps on blushing as he sneaks a hand into his pocket to rub the little squares.

Things start looking up for Mouse when Kolyat does his community service under Bailey.  Because Mouse is the only person he knows, they spend his lunch hours together on the Presidium (though, it sort of makes Mouse uncomfortable to be out in the open where everything is gleaming and posh, filled with light and the sound of water).  It’s weird between them, at first, but Mouse has enough stories about Thane to keep Kolyat coming back.  After a while they don’t talk about Thane at all.  They sit a little closer, make plans for movies and shopping for games, and Kolyat deals pretty well with Mouse’s childhood obsession with him. And when Mouse realizes that the affection he’s shown Kolyat is returned, genuine and free of obligation or influence, he pretty much thinks he’s died and gone…across the sea or whatever.  But there will always be a part of Mouse that thinks Kolyat only likes him because of Thane, or pities him in some way.  It’s a habit that’s hard to shake when you’ve never been anything but a piece of property, a conduit.  Still, he lets himself be happy when they’re together, shows Kolyat more than a few new things his sheltered ass could never dream of, and eventually Mouse has a new picture of life that doesn’t have to be imagined around a handful of holos.  He’s got a handful of _real_ every day.

But everything goes to shit for Mouse when Shepard gives The Illusive Man the finger.  During Shepard’s detainment, Kolyat travels back to Kahje with Thane to spend time with his family before…well, there’s no stopping _that_ train. So, Mouse can only watch them go and hope Kolyat wasn’t lying about coming back for him. About the plans they made.  He touches the new holo in his pocket and is stupid enough to hope.

Everyone under Cerberus who had contact with the Commander is questioned and re-assigned, and Mouse never gets to talk to Miranda again. She’s on the run, he understands.  Still, it stings to be left behind.  They send Mouse to a training camp for vanguards and adepts.  It’s not like he has a real option (not one he cares to explore, anyway) So, instead of running and hiding Mouse becomes a soldier in Cerberus’ army.  He figures it’s three squares a day, if nothing else, and everyone who cares about him is gone.  There’s that stupid hope again, a little more dangerous now, that Kolyat will come looking for him one day soon.  Training is hard, too.  At first he’s outclassed in every way, being smaller than everyone else.  But giant, glowing whips tend to even the odds. 

When Kolyat pings him, Mouse spends a week reading and re-reading the message:

_It’s not how I thought it would be.  He’s different.  I mean, worse and worse every day.  But that’s not it.  Anyway, we’re heading for the Citadel soon.  Dad’s convinced he can get in to see Shepard.  I haven’t told him yet, but with everything going to hell I decided to train.  I’m not as good as him, but you should see me charge.  You’d love it.  Wherever you are, just…I miss you.  Be safe._

He certainly doesn’t expect the picture Kolyat includes.  But he spends a whole lot longer than a week going back to _that_ image.  Mostly in the dark. 

Mouse is the only one in his squad to realize what’s going on with the suits.  There’s something wrong with the medi-gel dispensers.  Then there’s something wrong with the soldiers themselves.  Being prone to paranoia and listening to his well-honed survival instinct, Mouse stops eating Cerberus food.  He hacks his gear, replacing the not-so-standard issue medi-gel system with a black market item from Kannik, a salarian on the Citadel who still owes him a favor.  Mouse can’t escape on his own, but he knows how to blend and how to fake it until the right opening presents itself.

Which is good, because Kolyat doesn’t know the half of it.  Things aren’t just going to hell with the Reapers.  Shit is fucked and so is Mouse if he doesn’t find an out.  And fast.  He doesn’t get any more messages, but with Cerberus scientists poking around the barracks, getting nosier about him every day, Mouse can’t worry about his loneliness or his holos or how much he remembers about Kolyat’s smile. 

Cerberus sends his squad to Sur’Kesh and Mouse grabs his opening.  They find a squad like none he’s ever seen before.  Some kind of mis-matched group all kitted-out differently; a couple of humans, a quarian…and a drell.  And it’s not until he stares too long at the lean form, the blue-black armor, that Mouse realizes what he’s seeing.  Then he only sees a streak, a white flash burning across the battlefield, and the vanguard knocks him on his ass before anything else can register. 

So that’s how Mouse defects from Cerberus.  A hail of zinging rounds chipping away the salarian architecture while Kolyat yanks him into the shuttle …Mouse seeing, up close, how it’s possible to cry and laugh at the same time, and mean them both equally.


	42. iPhone Prompts - Short drabbles composed entirely on my phone during a road trip

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kolyat/Mouse, F!Hawke/Isabela, FemShep/Garrus, Varric, and Varric/Anders. These are WAY too short to go into individual chapters, so. . .

**historymiss asked:**  
f!Shep, Garrus, 'they'll name a city after us'

 

“Bullshit!” She touches his arm where he holds out the omni-tool, not missing how quick he is to remember which is her good eye. “Really? A whole city?” Garrus nods.

“Somewhere north of here. Guess what it’s called.”

She wishes she had an eye patch. People with eye patches are clever, and Shepard groans at her lack of spark for this sort of thing. “Dunno. Hit me.”

“Shakarian,” he drawls, snapping the message closed. Shepard groans again for an entirely new reason. Somewhere north of ridiculous.

 

 **cypheroftyr asked:**  
Varric/Anders, vacation in Nevarra

 

“Tell me again how this is relaxing.” Varric loads ten more bolts, squinting into the sunset where a dozen armored shoulders mount the crest of the hill before them. He’d planned on rum and scented sheets. Planning. That was his second mistake. Right after agreeing to help Anders. Plans were dangerous, though less so than an apostate with a penchant for exaggeration to rival his own.

So Varric watches with not a little aching pride as Anders tips over a fallen soldier, Pentaghast crest blazing, and comes up with a flask.

“There, you see?” He bites open the stopper, lips like a poised promise. “NOW it’s a vacation.”

 

 **cannibaljambox asked:**  
Varric/Anders - lazy morning

 

Anders blinks, feeling every inch as hot and loose as the curls of chimney smoke crawling toward the ceiling. “We could use something cool to drink,” he says, eyebrows lifted in expectation that won’t be met.

Varric’s not watching him so much as humming contentedly, or snoring. Anders can’t tell until he speaks, voice broken and breath hot on his chest.

“I’d be happy to oblige, Blondie. But I’m…”. Varric sighs, a thing Anders can feel all the way to his toes. “VERY comfortable.”

And though he can’t exactly say the same, not with all that heft pinning him, chest hair tickling and broad arms lazy around him, Anders certainly feels no compulsion to move. Not yet.

“Yeah, me too.”

 

 **cannibaljambox asked:**  
Kolyat/Mouse - "Trust me."

Trust him. Sure.   
  
Easy enough when they’re alone. Less so in the back of a boutique with sales clerks lurking in dressing area and the seam of the too-tight pants riding snugly from asshole to funberries. Kolyat tugs at his crotch once more and steps out.   
  
“See? What did I say?” Mouse is on him instantly, fiddling with the top buttons on the shirt to splay it open a little wider. And because no one’s actually looking, he goes ahead and runs an appreciative, lingering hand over the front of the trousers. Kolyat groans as quietly as he can manage. Mouse grins, “Perfect.”   
  
Trust him. For some reason playing dress up in a Presidium shop seems harder than the other activities they pursue together. Where trust comes surprisingly easy after a few tries. And Kolyat associates that request of Mouse’s with the taste of leather over steel. Trust me. Simple as the clack of a harness. As the bit had slid into place he swore his lips felt the marks of other teeth, and he went right ahead and trusted while his tongue traced the grooves.

 

 **Anonymous asked:**  
F!Hawke/Isabela - Folktales

 

“No.” Isabela takes Hawke’s hand off her naked hip. “I don’t remember any good ones, anyway.”   
  
It doesn’t matter that it isn’t true, that Hawke will forgive a small lie is something Isabela takes to heart. She turns away from that expectant face. It’s just that so many end badly, the ones that stay alive on the tongues of her people. The tales that last in her mind always begin and end with pitiable people, sorrow shooting through everything. And always in her mother’s voice. So no, she doesn’t tell Hawke any folk tales.   
  
Isabela feels a warm body scoot closer, and a warmer voice brush past her ill-timed melancholy. “Then we’ll just makes some of our own.”

 

 **historymiss asked:**  
f!Shep has a Deal With It moment

 

When she finally gets her eyepatch Garrus is beside himself. And not in the way she anticipated. It’s so much better than that.   
  
He lifts it out of the Kawashii box, setting aside the hand-written note from its custom designer…and stares at Shepard for a long while. The patch Is a version of his own visor, adapted and personalized and more perfect than she’d dreamed. Shepard takes it from his fingers, ignoring his agitated sigh.   
  
“Can I help it if companies are throwing themselves at me?” She tucks the eyepatch/visor around her tender head, marveling at the reaction it elicits from Garrus as much as the excellent fit.   
  
“You’re unbelievable. Stealing my signature look. Shameful, Shepard.” he clicks his teeth, head shaking solemnly.   
  
“You’re only angry because unlike you,” she leans close enough to feel his breath on her cheek, what’s left of it. “I make this look good.”

 

 

 **Anonymous asked:**  
Elderly Varric returns to a dying Kirkwall.

 

The first thing he notices, when his eyes play along and finally adjust abovedecks, is how dim the stone is. And it’s not a trick of the light, or age creeping across his vision. No, it’s dark in the middle of the day, walls charred and moldy (okay, moldier, in some cases), and Varric takes the dock with a faltering step.   
  
Because the second thing he notices, keen as the soggy smell of rotting dragonweed and piss, is that he still cares.

 

 


	43. Femshep/femshep - for Sev

What is a dream to her any more? 

Will it always be this melting, black version of a place she knew? Something drained and darkened that had been a forest, achingly bright, from a time when she was small and getting lost was the best thing that happened. Not the worst.

Shepard feels the movement of leaves beneath her feet, but they’re wrong. They drift like ash, kicked up, and forget to fall again. She moves through this place toward the only spot of light, darting between the almost-trees like the last sprite in a fairy tale.

But, fairy tales don’t smell like death, and the sprites don’t let themselves be caught. This one does. And Shepard takes the small, glowing shoulders in both hands, sharp lump forming in her throat at the sight of a familiar jumper, the texture so present, and a child’s eyes. Freckles. Grass. The ground rolling hard beneath little feet, skinned knees, and the sky rolling, too. Full of stars and possibility. 

Shepard knew her, once. She can’t be anything but grateful that child never knew her in return.


	44. FemShep/Garrus - for covenmouse who prompted "Lost Amongst the Stars"

Garrus doesn’t run on the Normandy.    
  
It’s not a hard and fast rule, though.  Hell, Shepard herself rarely paced the ship at anything less than a trot.  And, he’d broken the no-running rule only once that he could think of, forgiving himself the infraction before he’d even bolted through the hatch, the limp shape of her body, her broken armor, digging into his side all the way to the med-bay.

 

So, it’s with no small amount of grim necessity that he runs after her now, chasing the Commander toward starboard cargo, heart climbing his throat.

 

“Damn it, please!” She wails as the door slides open, and then he loses sight of her.  When Garrus shoots past the doorway he finds her banging disconsolately on the window as the trash cube meets its fate in space.  “NOOO!!”

 

Her breath fogs the glass.  Garrus sighs with relief.

 

“Thank the spirits.”  He groans, side-hitching from the sudden sprint.

 

“You haven’t won this yet, Vakarian.”  She turns to him, unbeaten by even the smallest things, and he supposes he loves this part of her, too.  “That copy may be lost to the stars, but I _will_ find another holo.  Snap one myself, if I have to.”

 

“You had your shot.  Let it go.” He takes a step back because she takes one forward. “You’re never going to catch me off-guard again.  Not like that.  Fool me once . . .”

 

The jab dies in his throat with way she smiles at him, sending a delightful, menacing tremor under his plates, and Garrus feels another sprint is likely to crop up in the very near future.

 

“It’s like you don’t know me at all.”


	45. FemShep/Miranda - a post-beam drabble for Ademska

“It doesn’t fly?”  Shepard fingers the armrest, poking a nail into the padding, and doesn’t look up at Miranda. “Color me disappointed.”

“This is only a prototype.” Her voice lacks none of its trademark confidence, and Shepard is reminded to think of it, again, as the better part of being perfect.  Or perfectly evasive.  Miranda continues, moving to the edge of the bed but not sitting, though in two weeks it’s as close as she’s come. “R and D are working double-time on a hover chair.  I think they’re scared to keep you waiting.”

Shepard lets the ache in her neck take over, head lolling on hospital starch. From here she can see only see grey through the window, clouds with no shape covering nothing she wants to see, wetting the wreckage of a city.  She wonders if London had looked this way after the Blitz, too.  The one before hers.  Miranda’s silence, her closeness, brings Shepard blinking out of her reverie.   “I’m sorry.  The chair is fine.  It’s just a constant reminder.  That’s all.”

“Funny, I used to feel the same way about you.” She sits, finally, perching on the bed somewhere near Shepard’s ruined hip, and it feels like they’ve tipped something over.  Everything that could be is already shattered, though, and when Miranda slips her hand beneath Shepard’s bandaged fingers she meets a steadier gaze than her own.  And not for the first time Shepard takes a deeper breath than she rightfully should.

Shepard doesn’t ask her what she reminded Miranda of.  Constancy is a farce, she’s proven it.  But if it’s all the same, she allows the pain of bones knitting, healing, and the flash of faces that mattered, to be a memory worth sharing one day.


	46. First Day - (Varric/Marian) for Kyshegall. From a 'tropes' meme prompt "celebratory kisses"

It's nearly midnight when he watches them pass the light, palm to palm, like members of a secret cult. Strictly speaking it wasn't far from the truth, though he'd have written them with hoods at the very least. And not those hideous hats.

Daisy takes it from Blondie, this shifting orb of blue and gold for some simple, human tradition, and for a moment Varric sees the light tracery of scars skimming her palm and wrist. It doesn't mean much beside her smile, though, and she lifts the ball of magic out to Hawke.

"Another year," Hawke says, making the light flare higher than their raised glasses. And as far as toasts go, Varric thinks, it hits all right notes.  Simple because it has to be in this company, but shiny enough to illuminate the few empty chairs at the table.  Even so, nobody cries.

It's not his holiday, none of them were, but this is the first year he drinks like he means it.  To health and to wealth, all that shit.  Ancestors be buggered if it came out better the way Andrastians told it.  The way they hoped was so different from his own reserved brand, and maybe he'd learn that technique in the next year, too.  All that cheer and rosy-cheeked warmth sold like hotcakes.

There are circles under her eyes, dog hair across her lap, and she gulps her pint greedily, licking her own smile until all the foam is gone. Hawke brings the ball of light down to Varric, and what he'd like to say is that doesn't tell her often enough that she makes him laugh. That she fills a room even when she's gone.

"Happy First Day," he says, instead, and closes his broad hand over hers, pulling in that light and putting it out.  She kisses him first, ruining the blocking he's planned, and he's already forgiven her before her tongue parts his lips. 


	47. "Stims" for anneapocalypse (Merrill/Isabela) Space AU trope

Pilgrimage seems like such a quaint word.

At least, that's how it feels  _now_ , ten months into her Omega squalor where the door never locks properly and the alley is cleaner than her kitchenette-slash-bathroom.

Merrill had learned to sleep with a pistol under her pillow and how to converse with the vorcha on the corner without giving in to reflex and stepping back a few inches every second.  It was rude, she'd discovered. 

But she'd never had a real emergency, an honest adventure in this place.  It'd just been really  _hard_.  And lonely.

Scanning the shop names overhead, mask fogging slightly from a leak she'd been unable to repair, Merrill walks the market and decides that this particular outing could be called an adventure.  Her heart seems to think so, banging away like an overheated fuel pump.

Just a small thing, that's all she needs.  But there are so few quarians on this glorified rock.  Everything else she'd been able to repair or replace on her own, but this. . .

She stops in front of a small boutique filled with red light, nothing but a closet really, hung with shiny, scarlet curtains.  Stepping inside, Merrill gasps.  All four walls positively drip with sex toys.  There are slings and discreet machines, lace and leather, and so much explicit product that Merrill doesn't know where to look.  

It's delightful, and she wants to cry for joy.  Which is why, in her giddy state, she almost steps on the proprietress.

"You lost, sweet thing?" Asks the dark asari, long boots and longer legs propped up on the sales counter.  She puts her datapad aside and stands, taller and more beautiful than any living thing Merrill has seen outside of a vid. Hip jutting, with a hand planted just there, she waits for a reply.  Merrill smiles, even though she knows it'll be hard to see.

"Not any more," she says, exhaling. "Do you know anything about stims?"


	48. "Registry" and "Pillows" - for goddessofcheese (Kolyat/Mouse and Isabela/Aveline)

2.

“If you’re going to do it, just…here,” Kolyat takes the scanner, eyes darting around the department store, and points it at a swanky set of bedsheets. Some outrageous thread-count. The scanner beeps, adding the second item to the Krios  _registry_. His partner in faux-wedlock grins behind his hand and Kolyat feels heat rise into his frills.

But Mouse just shakes his head, looking up in wonder.

“Best fake husband ever.  Let’s go get kitchen stuff.”

He’s heading for the upper floor before Kolyat can blink.

“There has to be an honest way to outfit the apartment,” Kolyat mumbles, catching up, long legs gliding beside Mouse’s quick steps.

“Probably,” he replies, winking. “C’mon, Krios, where’s the fun in that? Hey, I’ll let you be in charge of fake invitations.”

He’s about to ask who gets what in the fake divorce, just to be snappier than Mouse, for once. But then they’re standing amid the gleaming appliances and Kolyat’s eyes go wide, all hesitation draining away.

 

5.

She spends twenty minutes creating a perfect wall, twisted sheets and ratty blanket dividing the bed evenly…if unnecessarily.  All things having to be equal if the night was going to continue on its unfair trajectory.  Stink bombs in the barracks.  Of all the childish…

Aveline grabs four pillows, anemic things Corff should be ashamed to offer, and lines them up like sandbags on a front line. Then she decides to stack them. Fortification where it’s needed most.  When she looks up, pushing her hair out of her eyes, she finds Isabela’s eyebrows pinching together. All the weight of her humor gathered in a couple of heavy, vertical lines over her eyes.

“What?”

Isabela swallows the laugh she’s been holding and pats the mountain of featherdown.

“Big Girl, there are better reasons to pile the pillows in the center of the bed.”


	49. "You Know Me" - (Hawke/Anders)

.

He would have thought it impossible to pull off, and maybe that was more ego than fact, something Carver would confirm, but until this moment Hawke had scribbled it firmly in the can’t-be-done column.

Hard to manage the ‘tortured’ look when you’re caught teaching an elf to juggle. 

The other part, though.  Varric had never accused him of being  _un_ -sexy, and the lighting in Darktown isn’t doing him any favors, but still.  It chafes to be so close and fall short.

So, Hawke stares because this  _Anders_  is pulling it off and it’s hard to be anything but appreciative about that kind of skill.  Applied carelessly, too, it seems.  He forgets why they’re there in the first place, Varric prodding him toward something about maps and treasure and where the twain will surely meet.

Anders coughs and asks why they’d ever want to go to the Deep Roads.

“Oh, you know me,” he says, picking up three balls of clean bandages from a nearby table.  “Well, actually you don’t.”

.

All he has to do to change the world, as it happens, is turn a key and leave a thing unlocked.  He doesn’t even get to open it himself, and that night it’s minutes and seconds for him to decide that this time it’s the right call. Sometimes treasures are unearthed by tenacious hands, and sometimes the broken trinkets find you. 

Anders keeps asking him why, long after it’s not even a question. 

“You know me,” Hawke says, suppressing the sparking twitch that would make a smile and ruin the deadpan.  “I always get my man.”

.

“You know me, all thumbs,” Hawke mumbles into the soft space behind Anders’ ear, illustrating with a sweep of thick digits over his shirt, nipples hardening just beneath.

They don’t work it out right away.  It takes Hawke a week to figure out the quickest route past all the buckles, getting them wrong from the right side even with Isabela’s diagrams; Careful memorization of familiar stretches of fabric and skin rendered pointless in the dark.  

Then, it’s another week after that for Orana to repair his trousers, haste making waste of fashion, meager as Hawke’s had always been.

But they do work it out, thumbs beside his cheeks each night, smoothing downward, as Hawke crooks his own thumbs into Anders’ waistband.

.

She would have expected him to, the whole works, with flames and bloody heroics.  To make it all right.  And maybe that’s where they’d all been fooled. 

If she’d lived to watch it, he thinks, her plain words would have carried more weight than a plain dagger.  

He hadn’t grown strong, not enough for this, and he’s still little, small as pebbles under the smoke and ruin inside his cratered chest.

_You know me, I always save the day._


	50. One Sentence Meets Three Pairings - a meme borrowed from shimmy (Aveline, Bethany, Kaidan)

**_AVELINE – for anonymous_ **

_One:_

“I’d do it if I could, darling, but this one’s on you,” he says, lips unsteady on the sweat at her temple, and Aveline bears down on the pain in her belly like it’s all she’s ever done.

_Two:_

Whatever might be said for the virtue of armor, dragon-carved and a little battered, she’s become unreasonably fond of a flash of bare thigh when it’s saving her ass (or riding it).

_Three:_

“You never ask me to play,” she peeks over the rise of his sharp feathers and finds, in addition to a stellar pair of Queens, the inviting arch of a black eyebrow.

“Would you take more than my coin if I lost?”  
  
 

**BETHANY – for rhiannon42**

_One:_

She finds that her family name still has power, even in this prison, and she wields it like a tongue of flames under silverite; No one ever  _knows_  an Amell …not really.

_Two:_

“Oh, Maker,” they say in unison, falling into smiles cast less at the sunrise over the chateau than at the clasp of their fingers where they’re hidden.

_Three:_

“Okay, that’s a new one,” she murmurs and huffs through her smirk, flopping onto her back while in the air above the bed she makes an invisible check-mark. “So we’re good for  _seven._ ”  
  
 

**_KAIDAN – for shatteredclocks_ **

_One:_  

“There’s no Shepard without Alenko,” Shepard says, and in the space between the purloined words and the curve of those lips Kaidan hopes that, just this once, the turian is well out of range.

_Two:_

She’d given him a handkerchief, something old and old-fashioned, part of the ribbing he’d taken for sweating so much, and now… well, keeping it just means he’d let her bust all his ribs for the chance to tell her why he’d been sweating in the first place.

_Three:_

An implant was only as good as its host, something Kaidan owned as surely as the throb under his skull, and he was busy studying the ground between his feet to forget the grind between his teeth when a deep voice crept over his shoulder.

“Ah, an L2.  Well, that explains the sexy, tortured look.”


	51. "Firmament" - (Karl/Anders) The view from the top of the tower. And what that means.

They stand apart on the tower’s precipice, higher than any tree for miles, no wind to snap Kinloch’s faded banners and only minutes to go before the guards complete their shift change. 

All Karl can think of is how big the sky is, mouth twisting dryly at how, maybe, the dwarves are right to be wary.

There’s still so much of it after all, blue crowned with white, hanging over Ferelden while he’s been inside.  He rocks forward, balls of his feet catching his weight, and feels the urge to grip something. Maybe the sash at the back of Anders’ robes. If it comes to that.

Along with the thin air and the bright-edged clouds scraping the roof of the world, Karl’s forgotten how to accept the tug of high places, or how to be anything but frightened of the wide open sky. 

Anders, though.  Anders only clenches his fists against his sides and doesn’t flinch at the enormity of anything, least of all this great height or the shuffle of boots below inside the Tower’s tight ramparts.

“I know why they don’t let us come up here,” he says.

“Do you?”  Karl sways, and Anders nods.  “Then you know why I need you to step back and come with me.  Quickly.” 

There’s no smile, no answering quip like a dying wind against sun-warmed stone.  Anders only runs his long fingers over the top of his head as he breathes deeply, making a feast of the sky and the burnt-sap smell from far beyond the lake.

Even that is okay, Karl supposes, it’s a memory or a simple pleasure turned to caution, and he bunches his hand into the sash at the small of Anders’ back, yanking until they’re both skittering down the dark stairs toward safety.

.

At night, Karl settles Anders over him, broad as the sky, and remembers why.  Why they don’t go up there.  Knees and weight spread over Karl’s ribs as Anders rocks forward, cock jutting against his chin, and Karl’s tongue finds the slit and pulls him deep. 

Gathered on his chest is the confusion of rolling heat from the day, from Anders and how he’ll never be scared the way Karl is.  They scrub each other raw, and it’s the shifting pressure of storm clouds that build, grey over white, to shout down the sun. All the parts of Anders that Karl can’t really hold or know, and tries to anyway. 

He presses his thumbs into jerking hips, palms spanning, warming the cold-rain prickle of hard thighs where they’re wedged under his arms.  Braced above him, Anders squeezes his eyes shut, hair damp, and Karl sucks, draws back, and wants to laugh when the air rushes out of Anders’ slack mouth to form some foreign endearment. 

To Karl, it sounds like a curse, but most of the language from Anders here, like this, comes out that way.  A hot wind where it should be cool, and even the tall boughs bending when it blows. 

Karl flattens his tongue, rubs a finger heavily along the silky spot behind the heft of Anders’ balls, and makes him come because he can’t go.


	52. "Theory" - Teen Wolf (Danny/Isaac)

“It’s not … it doesn’t work like that,” Isaac says between short breaths.  But Danny’s sucking his fingers like he can find claws that aren’t there, and tugging on his zipper too slowly.  They’re rolling against what’s been in front of them in class, untested but not new. Long legs and short hair, and books flopping off the bed like dead birds.

“What does it take, then?” Danny asks, and puts Isaac’s spit-damp fingers on the plane of hard muscle just beneath his shirt.  His eyes are dark, and Isaac sort of wants to kiss those, too, to feel the lashes and the small heat of them.  

“I can show you,” Isaac replies after nearly swallowing Danny’s tongue, tasting Red Bull.  He’s lifting the polo off those shoulders, and he can’t make his body decide between how much he wants to spread his legs and pull, or push back, and keep pushing, until Danny hits something harder than Isaac’s dick.  Which is free-ish, and forcing his zipper the rest of the way down.

“I think I’d like to show you, instead.”

They rock up, kneeling into the kiss, and Danny grips Isaac’s hair softly.  His voice is wet, all sauna-hot condensation behind Isaac’s ear when he says, “There’s a theory I wanna test.”


	53. "Hairbrush" - (Bethany/Cullen)

When he’s sure his back will break before it can bow any higher off the bed, Cullen feels her mouth recede. Feels the sharp air clamor around his cock to take the place of all that warmth, feels the loss of it like a hammer against his spine as he huffs and drops.

He’d been there.  So close.

But she knew.  She always knows.

Bethany leaves him open and panting on the rough sheets, and when he blinks she’s standing over her meager trunk. Naked and indecisive.

“What?”

“Oh, where is my …hairbrush?” She murmurs, ignoring him.

Cullen knows.  He’s got minutes to plan, to pack up and deny her the rest of this game, or lay there and invite it.  But he’s nothing if not polite, and it’s a fault she exploits. While he’s touching himself, hot and struggling behind closed eyes, Cullen feels the bed jerk.

“Found it,” she says, and pushes his legs as wide as the smile that never climbs past the flush of her cheeks.


	54. "Latitude" - (FemHawke/Isabela)

“I don’t think that’s how you calculate direction,” Hawke says, rump writhing beneath the prickle of Isabela’s sextant. 

It makes soft circles over her skin, anchored by a scathing bit of metal that pokes at the height of Hawke’s ass.  From over her shoulder, she watches Isabela’s smile swerve off-course.

“How would you know?” Isabela taunts, voice low.  Her fingers plot a teasing line upward to the deep, divided sea of Hawke’s spine, the instrument dragging flesh to welt.  Isabela kisses the red as much as the pale until Hawke sighs under her weight.  “I’m the captain, here.”

“Fuck,” Hawke curses happily into dusty darkness, and rears back into the pocket of thighs waiting to fit against her.

There’s a curve to it, this play that always ends the way Isabela wants, like it can be shielded somehow from the disaster they’re bracing for.  Hawke can’t map it like she needs to.  So she matches, mimics, presses her fingers over Bela’s, and thinks of facing the wind instead of turning from it.


	55. "Imperator" - (Fenris/m!Hawke)

He doesn’t know what other men would do. 

The chair groans, rotted stuffing roiling out of the padded back, and they go on, making it worse.  He tears another man’s upholstery with the gauntlets he’d left on, raising himself on steady thighs.  This is what he feels, stiffening again, commanding the disintegration of the chair and the man sitting in it.  They fuck like one or the other is going to become a ghost in the quiet afterward.  Fenris grips with his knees, and he’d give anything to know what other people do. 

There is only Hawke.  And there are no others like him. 

Fenris settles, jaw jumping, for most he can take in a thrust and doesn’t look away from the bright eyes below him.  Hawke’s sweat and Hawke’s flush, and Hawke’s reverent palms hard and soft over his scars.  Only where he’d asked, and nowhere else.

“Touch me,” he says, speeding up and bowing over Hawke’s head.

Against the open spot in his tunic, Fenris feels a voice and the stutter of lips.

“Anything,” Hawke responds, jacking him.  “ _Imperator_.”

No answer is required.  But the chair fills the gap in Fenris’ voice, scraping the floor and grunting all the way down in its straps and splintered feet.  


	56. "Pin the Tail" - Teen Wolf (Stiles/Derek)

“This isn’t a game, stop ruining- okay, yes, technically it  _is_  a game, but it’s serious so just-”

Derek smirks, and he can’t see it but he swears he can actually  _feel_ Stiles make a face at him.  One of many he can almost imitate now.  Behind the blindfold there’s still some light, and it’s just a scarf anyway, purple and yellow, and it smells like Lydia.  He holds out the thumbtack somewhere in the blurry space before him, paper tail fluttering against his wrist.

“Okay, okay let’s do this,” he says, clearing his throat.  Stiles takes his shoulders and spins him, making the purple and yellow light swim.  The vague shape of the wall, the birthday banner, and the cartoon wolf (tailless) all become a short-term memory game as he adjusts to the motion.

“Awesome. Okay, go!” Stiles lets go, heartbeat skipping giddy against his back for a second and then gone, and Derek lurches forward. Stiles has to know this won’t be what he planned, that a game’s only a place-holder for other types of battle.  He hears Stiles’ Vans squeak away to his left.  Derek lowers his head.

“Nuh-uh. No wolf powers,” Stiles warns, suddenly behind him. “Don’t you know cheaters never prosper?”

Derek takes a step, tiny thumbtack slipping in his fingers. 

It’s his birthday.  There’s a banner and everything. Everything he hadn’t expected to find in the house. Not anymore.  He doesn’t have to be a cheater, but somehow it wouldn’t feel right if he wasn’t. 

As he swings his head, scenting, Stiles moves again.  Waxy candle smoke and aftershave, and purple and yellow can’t smother that.  He takes two more steps, quick and precise, arms bracketing that smell and pressing it to the wall.  When he makes a low sound, satisfied, Stiles lifts the blindfold off.

“Cheater.  It’s so  _not_  fair.  You get that, right?” He smiles tightly, jaw flexing under the freckles Derek wants to lick clean off his face. 

Instead, he nods victoriously, and jams the thumbtack and paper tail onto the wolf beside Stiles’ shoulder.  When he looks back, Stiles is watching.

“Happy birthday,” Stiles says, eyes tracking the enclosure of Derek’s arms on either side of him.

“Yep,” Derek replies, and manages to bump Stiles’ hands when the both reach for each other’s jackets.  He jerks Stiles forward into a kiss, feels sneakers banging his boots.

It is.  A happy … _something_. It’s not cheating if it’s your birthday, he thinks, and Stiles pulls him in like he’s agreeing for the moment.  Derek leans hard, yanks the scarf from Stiles’s fingers and puts his lips over a few of those freckles.

“Your turn,” he mumbles, sucking at the thread of pulse, following it to Stiles’ neck where he feels him nod.

“Aaaabsolutely,” he whines. “And if I cheat?”

Derek pulls back, dragging Stiles away from the wall with a finger crooked into his waistband.  They shuffle toward the couch.  “You won’t.”


	57. "Green Hills" - (FemShep/Ashley Williams)

When Ash takes her earpiece out, Shepard hears a grizzled voice singing about the green, green grass of home.  But she’s supposed to be sleeping, so she doesn’t let on as Ash puts her terminal on the floor and taps the light out.

Her cabin’s never dark, though, not with the tank on and the eels forever winding around each other.  And Shepard’s never as cold as she thinks it might be inside there, not with Ash sliding under the sheets. Under cover.

“You’re awake, huh?” She turns and gives Shepard a wide stare, edged in blue light.  “I’m sorry I kept you up.”

“That song reminds me of Heinlein.” Shepard says, eyes still closed for no reason.  After a minute, she looks up and Ash is biting her lip; Eating a smile she could be sharing. “I  _have_ cracked a book or two, Williams.”

“Actual books.  Impressive.”

Shepard moves on her then, pulls Ash’s hips under hers and watches those dark eyes flare.  Legs move for her, and Shepard sinks down between them until she’s looking at the bottom edge of Ash’s tee, feeling thighs high over her ribs.

“Out ride the sons of Terra,” she says, kissing the cloth before the skin. Then she mouths the skin itself where it’s bed-warm, and lower. “Far drives the thundering jet.”

Ash sighs and her belly jumps and Shepard pulls the top of her underwear down, kissing the elastic line. She can’t remember most of it, the poem or the things that seemed like they should have been poetry between gunfire, but Shepard hears her mouth make it up anyway. “Up leaps a race of earthmen. Out, far, and onward yet-”

It’s not the first time she doesn’t finish one thing while distracted by another.  Shepard’s pretty sure Ash knows the words, too, as she feels fingernails scrape her scalp and hears her own name (hardly poetic) muffled in the clutch of tight legs.

She’s pretty sure it’s the thought that counts.


	58. "Boots" - (Anders/m!Hawke)

They should be running but they’re falling instead, Hawke under him with a crooked elbow digging into the bedroom rug.  Anders blinks, eyes wet.

“There’s no time.”  _We should be running._

“Who’s fault is that?”

The words aren’t hot but they burn anyway.  It’s all burning now, there’s nothing but ash in the cold fireplace and everywhere outside, and Hawke’s hard against his hip.  The crinkles beside his eyes are wet, too.

So Anders rolls against him, delirium fading when he kisses Hawke’s dry lips. There was story they’d been told in the Circle, tales for red-eyed children to keep them docile, about being woken from a curse by the kiss of true love.  Anders hasn’t been asleep, but he wakes now.  His pants are open, his cock is tacky and stiff in Hawke’s hands, and this is true enough when they slide together without speaking.

It’s got to be love, he nods to himself, love in patchwork armor even with the tinny ring of destruction smothering his ears.  Hawke’s boots hitch over Anders’ hips and he feels how it leaves a silken smear of ash on the bared skin, what they’d waded in as they retreated.  Anders thrusts into Hawke’s palm and then pushes back into the drag of bootsoles on his ass.

There had been plenty of those falling, too.  Some were armored, silverite scorched black, and some had been small with perfectly untouched buckles.  Boots skittering down the charred stone like a storybook rainfall.

Hawke grunts, turns Anders’ chin toward him with gentle fingers, and kisses the tremble there.

“We’ll run,” he says, and Anders thinks of the holes in his boots he should have repaired before now. He laments, with a whine against Hawke’s shoulder as they rock together, how few things he’d thought to plan beyond the shatter, the fire. 

Do they run, after all, or do they fall and fall?


	59. "ROSES" - (Bethany/Cullen)

It takes her a half hour to find him, and this after asking several others. Having to draw down the mask of simpleness and turn her face up to different slotted helmets until she gets a straight, if muffled, answer.

He’s in the back of the kitchen, turns out.

So she goes on quiet feet, through the hallways that get dimmer as they get deeper, until she’s standing before him.  Back of the kitchen and it’s too warm and dark.  Empty, too, for now.  He’s hunched on a stool, damp with effort and unarmored.  But he’s never without a blade, even a small one, and she watches the grayish gleam of it cutting the gloom.

Cullen looks up, unsmiling, from the pile of greenery at his feet.  It smells green too, like sap and perfume.  Bethany toes the scraps and notices the bucket of blooms. Roses in a symphony of pink and red.

“What do you want?” He looks down and scrapes his knife the length of a stem, stripping thorns and leaves under blade and thumb.  Bethany pulls her lip between her teeth.

“What does anyone want?” She stares because he’ll look away if she’s bold enough.  He doesn’t.  That’s new.

“You sound like that dwarf,” he says and chucks the nearly naked flower into the bucket before selecting another, a kinked stem that’s long and heavily studded with thorns.  Leaves crunch under her soles when she steps forward and Cullen sits up because he has to, has to lean back for all the lack of space and air and comfort she’s offering. 

Bethany cups the rose, bringing her face close to inhale, and it’s heady the way a flower in this place can so quickly take on the sweat-stink of men and metal.  But that’s how the rose smells, cool and fresh but overwhelmed, and Cullen lets her breathe it in.  When she stands again he holds it out to her, but Bethany shakes her head, starting to sweat from the ovens and Cullen’s red cheeks.  But also his bitterness.

“Strip it for me,” she says.  “Wouldn’t want to get pricked.”

Cullen shakes his head too, an unbelieving resignation flitting across his face.  He doesn’t do what she asks.  Not this time, and that’s new too.  Bethany finds she likes the way anger paints him, here in the dark kitchen.  It’s a new labor.  He’ll adapt to the stifle of this bareness as he has to the armor and skirts.  Cullen drops the rose on the floor and reaches around her to jam his knife into the table.

It should worry her that she doesn’t flinch.

His hands pull her hips, palms rolling to knead, and Bethany moves between his open knees.  There are wasted thorns under her feet, threatening the thin soles of her shoes, and Bethany rests harder on them, inviting, as Cullen’s hand moves quickly under her skirt. 

He’s got one on her hip to keep her still, but the other is soaked, hidden and plunging inside her while Bethany’s head lolls. Cullen’s face is unreadable, dark and mirthless.  She doesn’t touch him, not even while he’s watching so intently, she just puts a hand on the table beside the blade that’s stuck there.

His thumb sweeps in circles, tight as the curls hanging over his forehead, and Bethany smiles down not at him but at the bounty of roses cresting the lip of the bucket.  Raucous pink.  As pink as she is where he’s working so industriously.

To please her?  To know he can?

Bethany thinks it hardly matters.

As she comes, quiet and hard against his fingers, she has the strangest desire to clutch one of those blooms in her fist; To watch it yield, compress all of its softness, and then open her hot palm to the smell of something beautiful, even if it’s not to last.

Wordless, she pushes back from him, skirt dropping.  Before she leaves the kitchen Bethany turns to watch Cullen sink back against the wall, eyes closed and hands limp across his thighs.

 


	60. "Placeholder" - Anders/Merrill

It happened just the once, no matter how Varric embellished. The night when Merrill drank the whiskey instead of the ale, and Anders drank both just to be sure. 

“It was locked,” he said. “My fault for being fashionably late, I guess.”

“At least you got that far,” she replied into her cup.

“Did I?”

Merrill nodded, pushing his tankard nearer to the limp curl of his fingers on the table

It was the closest to a toast they’d ever come, and no one but Isabela was around to see it.   Anders wondered if she had any advice that didn’t end in tattoos or exile, but Isabela left them alone before he could ask, taking with her what he could only hope was a pirate’s version of pity.  And Varric was asleep on top of his parchment, so there was no help to be found, really.

So that’s how they’d been left alone with their similar grief.  A locked door would do that, especially when you’d been stupid enough to hope.

That’s how Anders had let her crowd against his side through Lowtown, and how Merrill had let him touch her face in the murky threshold of her hovel.  He’d always liked the vallaslin, if he liked anything of hers. 

She had no lock, just the pale edge of her foot kicking the door open, and Anders didn’t need to be drunk to feel sick at the way he rushed inside.  He was going to feel it no matter the company, or the noxious concoction they’d shared.  Merrill created light for the lamps.  Anders created nothing but want. 

They didn’t speak much.  Merrill murmured  _don’t_  when sparks lit his fingertips, and then she flattened his palms and pushed him back, climbing on top of him because he was soft and she wasn’t.

Once, toward the end, Anders actually cried out in his native tongue, which Merrill would neither recognize nor cherish.  Somehow it was perfectly secret that way, and he thought it odd to feel so full of her, move and sweat with her, and not care.  She took his hand and put it to her face so he could trace the blood writing again.  He did it over and over while she closed her eyes and made them both whimper.

If later he let himself imagine what she’d been conjuring in the dark above him, Anders could not begrudge her.  He had done the same.  Though, at some point in their daily trudge to the coast, or deep into the sewers, she had stopped altogether, and he was pretty sure he never would.


	61. "Hands in the Air" - Femshep/Jack (subject zero)

_Alone_ isn’t a surprising feeling, or a new way to be, but there’s always been a comfort here, of all places, in knowing she’d never be the bent and shuddering figure holding everything up in some dark solitude.  
  
That’s not what a dance floor is.  
  
Either they’re too early, or the time in Purgatory is later than she always thinks it is, but there’s no crowd and Shepard sways alone on the pulsing grid of light.  The rhythm is relentless as Reapers themselves, so it’s more like a duty she knows to go ahead and hold that line by herself.  The dancers haven’t taken their platforms yet, and the bar isn’t sticky from spilled drinks.  It’s just Shepard and the music. Alone.  
  
Until a hard, low voice choked with laughter breaks through the beat behind her.  
  
“You’re a masochist,” says Jack. “Nothing new there.”  
  
“Been called worse, I suppose.”  
  
“Yeah, mostly by me,” she replies, taking Shepard’s arms down, converting her awkward solo into a duet of boots. “And I’m not apologizing.”  
  
With Jack at her flank, hip bumping and tattoos twisting, Shepard finds the beat.  Others come after a while, revolving cells of soldiers and civilians who manage a talent Shepard can’t.  Abandon.  Jack puts guiding hands on her waist, there’s sweat in the small of Shepard’s back and a purple sheen to her dark skin where the rolled sleeves have dampened.  
  
What pours from Purgatory’s speakers is probably music.  Shepard closes her eyes.  
  
“How did you do it?” She mumbles.  
  
“What? Learn to dance?” Jack smiles, all teeth and honest lips, especially where they split.  Shepard can’t even imagine the kid she was.  
  
“Survive.”  
  
Gripping the pulse at her neck, fingers grazing the sweat-shiny kink of Shepard’s curls, Jack comes in for the kiss. She’s a good shot, perfect muscle timing.  Shepard leans hard, her knees banging Jack’s, finding the heat at too many points where they touch. Not everything needs to be blown apart, sent skidding, but Shepard likes it that way, too. A masochist, but a selective one.  
  
“I wasn’t,” says Jack. “Thought I was, but you showed me different.”


	62. "Love Story" - ALL THE WOMEN OF MASS EFFECT

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for miranda and jack and liara and samara and EDI and ashley and tali and bakara and samantha and chakwas. . .

Whoever Shepard was nobody asked them the right questions when their time came.  By any standard, writers would call it an epic of galactic proportion, with an endless scroll of brilliant graphics as tall as Illium’s skyscrapers.

But when the channels were closed, interviews concluded, they’d each tell it darkly, different, in their far-apart ways. All the same.

It was a love story.

It was how perfection meant less than finding humanity where it couldn’t be engineered or manipulated.

It was a fist up the ass of anyone who got in the way, and knowing how to pry it open and lend a hand.

It was growing up, filling out the blue edges of possibility to invigorate dead civilizations, and earning a self-written place among the stars.

It was a sacrifice beyond the telling.

It was a life less artificial, built on careful calculations, finally embracing freedom’s ineffable math.

It was the stiff prose of legacy hammered to shining steel in a poet’s mouth.

It was striving for home with every breath, fever-flushed and forward, knowing comfort even in the lost places.

It was a startling voice, steady and strong as a heartbeat, commanding destiny over the dust of the dead.

It was a game unfinished, well-matched, played with a wink and an honest smile.

It was every loss counted, every laugh and every raised glass emptying to the through-and-through hum of engines.

It was their story as much as Shepard’s.

They shared the journey with stubborn joy, but not with everyone. It’s easy enough to paint a hero’s tale, studded with stars that didn’t die, and some that did, and call it history.

But it was a love story.


	63. Three-Sentence-Ficlets (Derek Hale, Isabela/Hawke, Anders/Hawke, Aveline/Isabela, Liara/Miranda, Isabela/Merrill)

I.  _for vendettalee_

What’s criminally unfair is that even his worst decisions were somehow easier than this, justifiable or whatever. But indulging himself, for only himself, has never been Derek’s strong suit. After fifteen minutes spent staring through the windshield, with an anguish reserved for Catholics and beauty queens, he shuts off the engine and goes inside the Dunkin Donuts.

 

II.  _for kyeshgall_  
The wind took the clew out over the deck, mainsheet whipping free of its block in the snarling gust, and with it went Hawke’s body. Isabela didn’t even hear her shout above the pounding growl of rain and waves. One moment there were six of them wrestling like sodden kittens for the tack, and then only five.  
  
III.  _for cheesiestart_  
He watched for the glint of a spyglass across the bay in the waning light.  Beside the open window, on the wall itself, Anders had doodled moons of every phase, some the very shape of their hidden bridge. She’d cross tonight, sure, but he doubted the tide would ever be in their favor.

  
IV.  _for ltleflrt_

There’s a tattoo, mostly filled with freckles and poor judgment rendered in fading black, but it’s there. On her ox-muscled ass, no less! Before Isabela can voice a single vowel or consonant, Aveline crushes a handful of smallclothes into her open mouth with a warning look.

  
V.  _for afragmentcastadrift_

Miranda shifts the baby to her hip, not ready to hand her back just yet, and watches her tiny blue fingers follow the path of raindrops on the window.  
  
“On Benning we managed to rescue a handful of civilians from Cerberus,” says Liara, “and before we left it started to rain. Acid rain, actually.”  
  
“It wouldn’t be a mission with Shepard if even the weather wasn’t out to get you,” Miranda replies, nudging her hand beneath the baby’s to feel the chill of the glass.  
  
VI.  _for iambickilometer_  
When they landed in Estwatch for repairs and provisions, Isabela bounded off the dock and into the backstreets to stretch her legs. She found the string, a pink and dirty lifeline clinging along the alleyway bricks, and followed where it threaded through bushes and market carts, all the way up the tumbled fortress to a broken parapet overlooking the port.   
  
“Still lost, kitten?” she murmured to the clouds, and wound the yarn into a sloppy ball.


End file.
